Scribus + XeLaTeX = Arabic

Scribus + XeLaTeX = Arabic

Scribus 1.3.5 (not released yet), has support for using TeX for text rendering via a special LaTeX frame.

I grabbed it from svn, built it, some quick configuration to use xelatex instead of pdflatex, and the result is the screenshot above :).

Now, I need to polish this and make a good configuration file for ArabXeTeX (that I'm using on top of XeTeX engine).

Maemo speaks Arabic

Maemo speaks Arabic

Testing Arabic support in maemo (this is maemopad, and the font is my working version of Mothanna font).

Listing GTK accessible fonts

I was trying to figure how to list fonts accessible to GTK (or pango actually), it turned out that pango.Context has a list_families() method that returns a tuple of pango.FontFamily objects.
Some thing like this:

window = gtk.Window()
context = window.get_pango_context()
families = context.list_families()

for i in families:
        print i.get_name()

Arabic Thunderbird

Arabic Thunderbird

I built an Arabic language pack for Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (originally based on Arabeyes translation, but completed and revised).

It can be downloaded from here. Feedback is welcomed.

Update: I've updated the file several times, to fix various problems, since this post, please download it again.

مولان: ويكيبيديا بدون إنترنت، وكمان عربي

صدرت أول إصدارة مستقرة بالعربية من مولان. مولان هي نسخة من ويكيبيديا (ومشاريع ويكيميديا الأخرى) تعمل محليا على حاسوبك وبدون اتصال بالإنترنت.

تحتوي هذه الإصدارة على:

  • ويكيبيديا (69,411 صفحة)
  • ويكي قاموس (11,642 صفحة)
  • ويكي مصدر (2,578 صفحة)

نزّل الاسطوانة من هنا.

Firefox 3 beta3 in Arabic

Firefox 3 beta3 in Arabic

The upcoming beta3 of firefox 3 with Arabic interface, it deserve the extra effort put into it. Thanks to every one contributed to this translation (and a big thanks to me :p).

Get tinderbox builds from here if you can't wait for the release (like me). I still hate firefox, however.

UPDATE: Beta 3 officially released, get it from here.

Smart fonts vs. dumb fonts

Update: I rewrote this port and changed its title from Pango vs. FriBiDi, as people misunderstood my point.

We have at least two free software libraries that are capable of doing Arabic shaping, Pango and the FriBiDi (fribidi-0.19 only).

Smart fonts are fonts that is accompanied by instructions that define how glyphs are selected to be laid out, in contrast dumb fonts does not contain such instructions and the text is laid out by simple character to glyph mapping.

Webkit rendering Arabic

Webkit rendering Arabic

WebKit-r29336 using Pango for font rendering, enabling Arabic and other complex text rendering.

Minbar under maemo - 2

Minbar under maemo - 2

I played a bite with the source trying to hildonize it, main window is almost working, but Shoe/Hide doesn't work properly. Also about dialoge doesn't show for some reason. I will try to fix it later, I have to sleep now ;p

أوبن أوفيس ٢,٣,١ العربي

أوبن أوفيس ٢,٣,١ العربي

نزّل أوبن أوفيس ٣,٢,١ من هنا (لينكس، أو ويندوز) ، وملفات التعريب (لينكس أو ويندوز) واستمتع :)

لَقِّم المحتوى