ArabeyesTodo

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:

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:

kk

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)

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