pidgin BiDi

[Amr Shahin]

i'm not exactly familiar with GTK, but i was sure it won't be exactly
perfect, that can be fixed along with the bidi support process.
and yes i agree there is no industry standard for rtl display, specifically
for mixed dir text indentation and similar concerns
that said, the rest of your concerns shouldn't be problematic. i'm a native
arabic speaker, direction detection libraries are available , other problems
could be tackled when they show up

if you're into this you can send me a couple of documents to read to
determine the parts i should start coding



On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 7:13 PM, Ethan Blanton <elb at pidgin.im> wrote:

> Amr Shahin spake unto us the following wisdom:
> > i was wondering if ur into supporting/enhancing BiDi support in pidgin,
> if
> > so i will be more than happy to contribute :)
>
> The short answer is that, yes, we would like to have better
> bidirectional text support in Pidgin.  The long answer is ...
> more complicated.  ;-)
>
> There are several possible points of failure in our bidirectional text
> support.  The first is in the Gtk+/Pango/etc. libraries that we use.
> It is my understanding that, in later releases, these are actually
> pretty good.  However, you may find some problems with our bidi
> behavior which ultimately end up in these libraries, or in our
> interaction with these libraries in ways that are difficult to fix.
>
> The second, and I think the first one interesting to us, is in our own
> code, in the widgets we have implemented for editing and display (such
> as GtkIMHtml).  GtkIMHtml itself is slated for eventual replacement,
> but it seems likely that that will be a while yet.  We know there are
> some bidi text problems in these widgets, but we either a) don't know
> how to fix them properly because we're not RTL users ourselves, or b)
> there seems to be disagreement among RTL users, even of the same
> language, as to what the "right" behavior is.
>
> The third is in the protocols.  In some cases, protocols need hints as
> to what directionality the text they are transporting is supposed to
> be, and we may not always get this right.  In particular, I've seen
> complaints that we don't always get it right on MSN.
>
> If you'd like to tackle some or all of these problems, we'd love to
> have your help.  None of the primary Pidgin developers use a RTL
> language for computing enough to have a good feel for where things are
> going wrong, or how.
>
> Ethan
>
> --
> The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
> for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
> determined to commit crimes.
>                -- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
>
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