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Re: linux X-serving MS applications



Although what Udi says is much more exact than the others, I
respond to his message, since he "forced" me to do it (by
mentioning my name :-)

Udi Finkelstein wrote:

> I think I have to disagree here.
> The logical standard seems to be better from a technical point of
> view. The fact that the english version of Netscape cannot display
> logical hebrew is merely a technical problem. If Linux users wants a
> solution, someone will have to come up with a solution. (Adding
> right->left into QT, and making a hebrew KDE!). Any volunteers? ;-)

QT/KDE will not solve anything. Most of the applications, especially
the real-world applications (e.g. Netscape), are based on libXm,
so you need Motif. I hope to do the Linux port soon. As you probably
know, I am stacked with a lot of obligations, and I really really
try to finish this long unfinished saga  :-(

> I think ANY hebrew information should be stored in the "logical"
> direction. otherwise, when you try doing any operations on it, you get
> funny results, like an address book with hebrew names sorted left to
> right (i.e. according to the last letterin the name) instead of the
> first letter.

This is only one of about a dozen (!) of technical reasons. You will
not find even ONE among all the BiDi experts, who prefer visual. It
includes the experts of Accent (Kivun), IBM (Mati Allouch and Israel
Gidaly who wrote some books about BiDi), Microsoft (yes, some of the
biggest experts in BiDi are from Microsoft), Mark David and other
people from international standardization institutes, and of course
the Israel Standards Institute.

BTW: someone suggested contacting Missrad HaTikshoret and asking
them to set a standard for the Hebrew on the Net. Well, they are
already represented in standardization comitees of the Israel
Standards Institute (I am too), and even sponsor some of the
activity. There are already comitees discussing the Hebrew on the
Net (e.g. HTML), and some standards are already in final drafts.
As I mentioned, there is a consensus regarding to the superior of
logical.

> I **THINK** Eli is selling a server doing automatic translation of
> international web sites handling logical->virual, we well as rendering
> international fonts into graphics automatically. You can use any
> english browser to browse any web site. Since Eli's site is currently
> down (try www.elmar.co.il), I can't really verify the above.

I hope to set the site back today or tomorrow (now really!).
Regarding to the technology you mentioned: Although it already
worked perfectly on June, it was far from being a shelf product. I am
working hard (in time which I don't have...) to make it a "product".

> (Eli: if you would open such a free proxy site but made it commercial
> by adding ads, this would be great!)

I was going to do it anyway, and without ads. This was the intention
from the beginning. Anyway, I don't have the bandwidth needed for that.
I'll be looking soon for a university which will be willing to host it.
In addition, I have thoughts about renting it to Israeli ISPs (I know,
they don't have money...  But I expect that the costs of the
international lines will cut by 70%-80% in a year. In addition, I
don't see any reason why an ISDN user of 64K or 128K should pay 1/10
of what a 64K frame-relay user pays. I know, he should pay Bezeq for
any Peima, but shouldn't I pay them for frame-relay? Much more than
ISDN?).

P.S. If you don't have a really important thing to write about, please
don't respond. I really don't have the time for it  :-(   Sorry!

-- 
Eli Marmor
marmor@elmar.co.il
El-Mar Software Ltd.