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Re: Hebrew task list



===> Dov Grobgeld writes on Jun 12,  8:27am :
===>
===> Subject : Hebrew task list
==>
=> Speaking about Hebrew on the net, I got the idea that we should create
=> a "Hebrew Task list", about projects that should be carried out to support
=> Hebrew better under Linux. I can think of the following projects. 
=> Please send in your own ideas to the list.
=> 
=> * Reverse screen support in emacs 19.28 .
=> 
=> * Support for right to left text in Tk. This may involve several levels.
=>   The simplest is the possibility to just reverse the text in the
=>   widget. More fancy options would be to introduce tags denoting 
=>   right-to-left portions, like TeX--XeT.
=>   
=> * Support of reverse geometry in the Athena widgets. That is, nothing
=>   fancy, just a flag to be able to reverse the screen like in the editors
=>   hed/rsvim. This is by the way not that simple, I looked in to it once,
=>   and the screen direction assumptions are deeply burried in several
=>   nested levels.

Is this the best way to go? I am not that sure, I think this deserves some
thought.

=> 
=> * A Hebrew line printer program for postscript. I could easily make such
=>   a program if I knew of any free fixed-pitched type1 font.
=> 

If you mean a program that converts Hebrew text to postscript I have one.
It is originally meant for translating output meant for Epson printers to
postscript. Therefore, it also translates some Epson escape sequences.
The only problem is that this program uses DOS Hebrew encoding (0x80-0x9a),
this can be fixed by piping through tr. I may have even included an
option in the program to use the 0xe0-0xfa unix Hebrew encoding.

The program should compile on any unix which gcc and runs on DOS too.

It found for anonymous ftp at:
ftp://ssl.cs.technion.ac.il/pub/Granot,Gili/pub/epsonps.tar.Z 
or lookup the following URL:
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gil/var.html

=> * A X11 based mail program supporting Hebrew in a natural way.
=> 
=> Dov
=> 
=>   
==>
===> end of the message of Dov Grobgeld.

IMHP some further goals should be:

* Fixing the bugs in hxterm (for instance, underlining behaves bad when in
      right to left mode).

* Getting a bi-lingual bi-directional editor. Dov's version of vim should
  cover this.

* Hebrew support for WWW clients. I am not sure about the situation here.
  Is there a general solution on the way? I do not know of a text describing
  the current situation with a HOWTO.

* Fonts: the range of available Hebrew fonts for X is small. Especially
  fonts which are suitable for xterm. I think that we should collect fonts
  and convert fonts from various sources to X fonts. Is it true that there
  can be no legal rights on fonts? (only on the software that uses the fonts)

* XeT/LaXeT maintenance

Gili