«ArabeyesTodo»: الفرق بين المراجعتين

المراجعة الحالية بتاريخ 03:20، 10 فبراير 2017

This a list of projects and TODO's that are global to the Arabeyes Project as a whole. These projects are considered important stepping stones to fulfill the Arabeyes' main goals. Please let us know which areas are of interest to you (to work on) and/or if you have further suggestions that ought to be included. (contact@arabeyes.org)

Refined Ideas

These are self contained projects for anyone who is willing to get involved in Arabic related Development.

Missing Quran characters from Unicode

Unicode does not contain the proper characters to encode the Quran properly. We need to put together a solid proposal with the characters that are absoltuly necessary.

We know that there are countless encodings that encode the Quran. One can easily create a custom encoding as well as a font. However, unicode is the standard and is our aim.

• There have been some discussions in the past about this, see:
  • Unicode Quranic Glyphs Proposal
  • Quran data and issues in encoding the Quran in unicode
  • Proposal for the Basis of a Codepoint Extension to Unicode for the Encoding of the Quranic Manuscripts
  • Questions about yeh, hamzah on yeh, alef maksura and dotless ba

• Draft proposals:
  • unicode_quran_prop.pdf
  • qu_prop.pdf

Read the above, and the summary here, and you should have an idea about what is needed. This is a very important issue, you are welcome to follow up and push this forward. Start by subscribing to the "general" mailing list (http://lists.arabeyes.org) and send us an email there.

We also need an Arabic authority to review our proposal to add the new characters and certify that the Quran can be encoded properly that way.

Fonts

Improve and create new Arabic Free fonts

libarabic

A library providing various functions for use with Arabic supporting applications, examples include:

• normalisation: e.g محمد , مُحَمّد
• morphology library (spell checkers, translation...)
• ....

ITL ports

Ports to most other popular languages written on top of the current ITL (which is written in C). A lot of people need ITL ports to languages like PHP, Perl, Java, TCL, Python

• more about the ITL

Website revamp

The website (arabeyes.org) needs to be ported to Drupal and integrated with other services including:

• New theme
• Proper bidi support
• Project management pages
• Proper RSS feeds
• Translation statistics (the current implementation is buggy and inaccurate), include ability to:
  • Download files
  • Assign files (or 'take them') through multiple phases, e.g

translation, QA1, QA2...

• Qamoose integration

Another option might be adding gettext and RTL support to the current CMS and (as well as fixing styles and BIDI).

The final product will serve as a proof of concept of a bilingual bidirectional website.

Mediawiki BIDI and internationalisation support

Currently mediawiki does not properly allow for two or more languages on the same instance of the wiki, especially if they have different directions (e.g English and Arabic). This project aims to write mediawiki modules for that: auto BIDI and multilingual support. This will be of use to wikis like this one and the wiktionary sites (ar.wikipedia.org).

Cygwin

Add Arabic support to Cygwin.

Bug squashing

There is a collection of showstopper bugs related to Arabic support in Gnome, Abiword, VIM and Firefox, the bugs have been open for 4 years because they are fairly involved and need some dedication. This project is an attempt to tackle these bugs. They are shown here:

Technical/Code Issues:

Free Fonts

• Need KACST to include the various changed from MohammedYousif (Quran)
• Need KACST to consider various changes,
  • Tashkeels/diacritics deminsions (kacstposter/kacstdecorative/kacst-qr)
  • Style setting in 'fonts.cache-===is wrong (should be Regular/Bold, etc)
  • Possibly consider extending coverage to include Farsi/Urdu/gaf

• Involved:
  • Khaled Hosny.
  • Afief Halumi.

• Status: Work in progress.

Printing (http://www.cups.org)

• Need to add utf8/bidi/shaping to lp/lpr/enscript for Arabic text printing
• Status/Plan:
• Need help on all above items

Terminal Emulators

• Gnome-terminal: Need to include shaping
• Xterm: Need to include Bidi/shaping (already has utf-8 support)

(www.wholehog.fsnet.co.uk/robert/xterm)

• rxvt: Need to look into adding utf-8/Bidi/shaping support
• PuTTY: Need to add remaining Arabic support
• Mlterm: Solve bidi on the command-line BIG issues - shell related
• Need an overall spec on how bidi/control-characters are to be

handled within a terminal emulator (cursor movement, etc)

• Involved:
  • was - KamalDalal (PuTTY)
  • was - NadimShaikli (mlterm)
  • is - AhmadKhalifa (PuTTY)
• Status/Plan:
• Need help on all above items

Terminal Libraries

• Slang  : Add Bidi/Shaping to S-Lang library (www.s-lang.org)
• Ncurses: Add Bidi/Shaping to Ncurses library

(www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html)

• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

Man pages in Arabic

• 'groff' (manpage formatter) doesn't seem to work in Arabic, need to investigate what's needed (more details)
• Viewing manpages in a browser (using man2html for example,see this thread)
• Manpage translation project
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

Fribidi library

• Need inclusion of shaping into library (the code is already there, some one

should look what is missing for it to be released)

• Invovled: NONE
• Status/Plan:

Islamic Applications/Libraries (ITL)

• Need code review and authentication of algorithms
• Need Umm-Alqura algorithm/details
• Complete a simple perl-GUI for 'itools'
• Complete a fancy GUI
• Involved:
  • was - AhmadTwaijry (GUI)
  • is - NadimShaikli
  • is - ThamerMahmoud
• Status/Plan:
• Need help on all above items

Quran Datafiles

• Need an authority to verify data files' content and correctness
• Involved:
  • was - AhmadTwaijry (seeking help in .sa)
  • is - NadimShaikli
  • is - MohammedYousif
• Status/Plan:
• All contacted groups have not responded, NEED HELP

Missing Quran characters Unicode

• Proposal written, but not submitted

• Need a solution that doesn't rely on a specific font technology

• Involved:
  • was - Mohammed Yousif
  • was - Nadim Shaikli
  • is - Khaled Hosny

• Status/Plan:
  • We started discussion in unicode[at]unicode[dot]org maling list regarding this, a draft proposal is here.

• Need help on all above items
  • Need an Arabic authority to review our proposal to add new characters
  • Need a scholar versed in different Quranic orthographies (North African, Cairo, Pakistani, Turkish, etc...) to help in identifying missed characters and reviewing/supporting the proposal.

Emacs

• Need to verify bidi inclusion into emacs' main tree
• The inclusion was supposed to have started, but no one is keeping track
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

AbiWord

• Contact Tomas Frydrych <tomas frydrych - uklinux net>
• Text rendering is now handled by Pango
• OpenType rendering still buggy, see bug #11307
• Involved:
• was - MohammedSameer
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

BiCon

• Do enough distro's know of the existance of this console tool ?
• Need to push its inclusion for better distro setup support
• Any functionality and/or build issues ?
• Involved:
• was - MohammedElzubeir
• was - SamyAlBahra
• is - MuhammadAlkarouri
• Status/Plan:
• Need help on all above items

Wine (http://www.winehq.org)

• Need shaping/Bidi
• Current support needs rewriting, as is based on dead end technology
• Bug #609 tracks what needs to be done.
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

• Shaping patches have been contributed into http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2006-December/034248.html

QT bugs/issues

• Need to verify complete Arabic functionality
• Involved:
• is - YoucefRahal
• Status/Plan:
• All known bugs (and suggestions) have been reported to Trolltech
• Where is Trolltech with bugs/suggestions ?

Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com)

• Need Arabic support compiled/included (fonts, applications, etc)
• Need 'mlterm' included among others
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

WeirdX (http://www.jcraft.com/weirdx)

• It's a Java X-server - login to linux from any host via browser
• Need to verify that Arabic is visible/usable under weirdx
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

LaTeX2HTML

• Add Arabic language (requires little Perl knowledge)
• Create a 'style' file like one of the packages in latex2html/styles/
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

WinSCP (http://winscp.sf.net)

• Add Arabic support (UTF-8, Bidi)
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan
• Someone needs to look into its current status and take ownership

Non-Code & i18n/Translation Issues:

OpenArabia.org

• Needs to include all other LUGs' news (convince 'em to use RSS)
• Need a list of skilled people who can make this a reality
• Need a proper admin for this portal
• Involved:
• was - AhmadTwaijry
• is - NadimShaikli
• is - AbdulazizAlarfaj
• Status:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

Arabic wordlist

• Need a complete list of Arabic words for Arabic-to-English dictionary
• Involved:
• was - AhmadTwaijry
• was - ArafatMohamed
• is - AbdulazizAlarfaj
• Status/Plan:
• Need a mechanism for how these words will be listed (eg. by root?)

Arabic translation of Arabeyes.org site

• Need someone to compelete the translation of Arabeyes' site
• Involved:
• was - AhmadTwaijry
• was - ArafatMohamed
• is - AbdulazizAlarfaj
• Status/Plan:
• Plone interface translation complete
• Awaiting deployment of Plone
• Need mysql table changes to hold AR translations for static content
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

WVware (Word Clone)

• Need Bidi/Shaping
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

Content Management System (CMS) Arabization

• CMS's like phpnuke/postnuke/xoops/etc use CP-1256 and NOT UTF-8
• Need to instruct module owners to NOT use CP-1256 and use UTF-8 instead

- This is very important as more and more people opt to use CMS - UTF-8 should be the default option at a min - Current implementations don't even allow one to use UTF-8 Arabic

• Need to stress the importance of UTF-8 esp. for open source projects
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

Mutt

• Is localization possible/needed ?
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

LingoTeach (http://lingoteach.sourceforge.net)

• Language teaching program

(Translate lessons, localize application and add vocal recordings)

• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

Children Games

• Add Arabic to Ktouch (typing tutor)
• Finish translation and localization of GCompris

Done (thanks to Anas Husseini)

• Find a list of viable games to include
• Need programs to teach kids Arabic
• Involved:
• was - IsamBayazidi
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)
• Contribute to Translation of Sugar desktop , from the "One laptop Per Child" project.

Various Issue/Needs:

Registration as a non-profit organization

• Need to select a country
• Need to get the list of people who can help
• Anything else that is involved
• Involved:
• is - ArafatMedini
• Status/Plan:
• Final choice for a country rested on Germany
• ArafatMedini and several other people in Germany offered to help
• ArafatMedini plans to be seriously involved in this issue
• This item needs a bit of follow-up

ACE

• Need another impartial organization to take it over
• OpenArabia.org (OAO) is slated for this task, but we need OAO functional
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• EgLug emerged as a possible choice
• This item needs a bit of follow-up

Shirts

• Need a means to print and distribute T-shirts with Arabeyes' logo
• Involved:
• was - SamyAlBahra (created a nice design)
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into cost and what is required

CD-distribution

• Need a means to print and distribute Arabbix CDs
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into cost and what is required

Awareness -- UTF-8

• Find all applications that utilize UTF-8 to add bidi/shaping
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Someone needs to look into this and report back (take ownership)

Awareness -- Window Managers

• Instruct all window managers about the inclusion of bidi/shaping
• Compile list of all window managers, classify based on lib dependency
• Systematically query Qt and Gtk based ones initially

Awareness -- Documentation

• Generate a list of documents/resources (FAQ/links)

(a means to educate people on various Arabic issues - general)

• Generate a step-by-step document on translation (kbabel, etc)
• Come up with means to create more technically heavy-weight people
• Involved:
• is - AbdulazizAlarfaj (translation document)
• Status/Plan:
• List of documents available
• Translation document available, but needs overhaul

People

• Find and retain a lawyer
• Find and retain 2-3 artists
• Find and retain a Public-Relations (PR) coordinator
• Find and retain "chimers" (peer pressure people "yeah, want/include it")
• Involved:
• NONE
• Status/Plan:
• Currently have 2 artists. No solid contribution as of yet