Re: (no subject)

["Ali Abdin" <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

> Hi all...
> I am not sure if I am asking this question on the correct list or not. So
if i
> am on the wrong list, please let me know which one i should be posting
this
> question on.
>    The question is: "How much support exists in Gnome and its libraries
for
> Arabic language support?" and if there is, who is working on it?
>
> Thank you all :)
> Nazeeh

At the moment - there is basically no support in GNOME for Arabic. But
things are looking very good :) Owen Taylor has been working on Gtk+ 1.4 and
Pango and integrating the two. Pango can be found at www.pango.org - Check
out the screenshots that he has posted - They look very encouraging for Gtk+
1.4 :)

Once Gtk+ 1.4 is released, and GNOME 'converts' to it (Scheduled for GNOME
2.0 I believe) then you will see Arabic support on Linux. There will be some
issues after that. One of the big issues is 'localizing' all the
applications out there. It is a pretty 'daunting' task :) Of course, I
expect there to be 'other' issues  with it, for example you must use a
Unicode font (with Arabic support) but there is already a couple that do
support it - so thats good :) but don't expect to do any Arabic Desktop
Publishing :)

So, the future is looking bright - but it is still in the future - somewhere
around GNOME 2.0 :)

Ali Abdin