salamo 3likom

Dear all
Dear Redhat
why redhat.com does not make any offer for arabic user??
i think redhat linux suport alot of locals.
why redhat did not enabled the redhat linux for arab?

Salamo 3alikom

Hashim .. Join the team I am leading if you want to help in this. Red Hat is putting an effort for arabization. A lot of work done on Fedora to solve arabic locales, check it out.

If you check the work done so far you will recongnize that arabic support is there.

You should be able to enable Arabic interface if you chose lang Arabic from the GUI interface as your Lang. It also have the latest KCAST fonts.

The problem now is, console with arabic is too slow and affect a lot of things, but you should have good arabic support in the GUI.

You may ask, why we do not have Katoob or other stuff in the distro. Katoob has good features, yet it is duplication for the gonome editor , and the other editors which are already exits. Red Hat stratigy if we have A & B applications has nice features both, it is usually to contribute the B work into A or B into A, or have C , so the maintainance and support be min.

The major effort now needed is to translate the redha.com web site, and other red hat components. If you would like to contribute and be active in this effort plz pm me.

which means you'll have to use all of gnome to do simple arabic text editing.

maybe the you'll get more choices with Fedora

cheers,
Alaa

>> which means you'll have to use all of gnome to do simple arabic text editing.


I mean console with something like acon or whatever .. the new VIM support arabic and you can write text file with it. I am not sure what elese you might need as of arabic support on the console.

Fedora out of box support arabic and have the fonts ready. You can install whatever application you need and have the right keymap and fonts to do that.

For the translation of the GUI this is about updating the new .po files into the distro for each applicaiton, which is not considered a programing effort rather than a time to translate and have it in.

I personally do not use the arabic GUI and will not do anytime, not sure how many here would use it.

Also the distro by default now support UTF8 and you have better support for all the languages and RTL langs like arabic.

I was refering to gedit
so the arabic patches are now officialy part of VIM or is RedHat/Fedora applying the patches??

cheers,
Alaa

First of all, let me assure you that Arabic support is here to stay. It is available and it is always going to be there, improving by the day.

Secondly, what you are asking is why RedHat is not offering you an easier configuration (or rather, pre-configuration) for Arabic users. I say that because, whether you are using RedHat or not, you can always enable Arabic support and install whatever applications and libraries your heart desires. RedHat is simply a linux distribution, it does not by _ANY_ means define Linux (and it most certainly is not my favorite one ;)

Now, the reason why RedHat doesn't support Arabic users in the way that you would like is that it simply does not make the numbers. Not enough users to justify the costs. Nothing more. Contrary to common arguments, it is not a matter of including package X or package Y because X is similar to A and B. No. This is not the issue.

The issue here is to support Arabic locales properly. The issue here is to provide official RPM's of Arabic translations of different main-stream applications. The issue here is to compile Arabic options when patches are submitted to mainstream applications.

RedHat likes to call itself an Enterprise Linux solution. That is fine. What this means to you and me is that its target market is not the home user. You have to keep that in mind when you ask things or expect for RedHat to do things about it.

So, how do we move things in our direction? It is very simple really. Instead of posting here your question, you do the following:

1. List the things you consider to be important to you (keep things specific, 'support for the arabic user' is not good enough).

2. Write an email to RedHat

3. Post the email here for others to know you have sent it.

That would be a good way to proceed.

As far as our RedHat guy here goes, I am not exactly sure what he is leading. We tried to figure out what linux-me is all about and we are still not sure ;) Perhaps a more focused plan and a more transparent agenda would shed some light unto this mysteriously set project. I don't know why we have to have an intermidate person to go between the users and RedHat.

Simply contact RedHat directly. We have had no problems communicating with several RedHat developers in the past and I was never put under the impression that there were boundaries and loops to go through first.

As far as our RedHat guy here goes, I am not exactly sure what he is leading. We tried to figure out what linux-me is all about and we are still not sure Perhaps a more focused plan and a more transparent agenda would shed some light unto this mysteriously set project. I don't know why we have to have an intermidate person to go between the users and RedHat.


No one said you have to have anyone in between or anything. I am leading a project to do something I do want to do the way I want to do it, and nothing to do about the company itself.

As you said you should be able to communicate directly with redhat, forget about the RedHat guy here because he is not gonna be here anymore.

Red Hat is a ditro yes, and the arugment is as I said it, they define what they want to put in their distro. If you put an effort about katoob check bugzilla and the communication made a year ago about it with Red Hat, and see the answer which was exactly what I mentioned here. They did welcome the programe and said it has good features and simply asked to contact gnome to either replace the editor there with katoob, or contribute the effort into the existing one. Can you tell me what happened since then ?

Arabic support is avialable yes. Arabic can be enabled in RH Linux yes.

Let me ask you then, who define the main stream , and why should be the translation the way it is now? Who put standards of arabization ? How mature is the applications you are talking about ? how much testing and QA'd ?

As far as Linux-ME is considerned .. Why you are so concerned about it and everyone is ? It is simply a personal web page holding some articles, have a project running to collect the arabic good stuff and try to have better arabic support in RH Linux. Is not pushed or sponsored by RH as someone in #arabeyes claimed, and it is not something RH trying to do and afraid to face Arabeyes directly.

I do not know why everytime I communicate with Arabeyes I feel I should not ?? I have been trying to do so for sometime and got no response , last time Alaa asked me to join #arabayes I felt I did a big mistake to be there, tried to be nice, but wow they are attacking me , and asking me what are we trying to say because Mr X is busy .. Although I staid, and said I will write up a list of issues I see at Arabayes to discuss, and Nadim said ok. Was busy last week thats why I did not do that. Now here you go .. it is another one from Arabeyes attacking here.


Want me to tell you why I do not like arabeyes .. it is simply the main reason is the attitude plus some other real issues I can see there.

Is there a problem having another one trying to do anything outside Arabeyes, if so then it is mistry ? Goodness!! Is it me who is not seeing things clear, or twisted minds still out there ?

No one told you have to have anyone in between, and honestly now I am really sorry to be active here or have my site at all. If my effort is bothering you that much .. I am taking it off the site now. Live in peace and forget about Linux-ME and the RH Guy !!

RH is not as what you are saying, and the arugment you are declining is a true arugment, maybe you guys need to think in other way, the way the things is real. What happened to the distro locales of RH ? Is the doc you have about adding fonts is all about it ? Does it take 2 years to provide that as mentioned on the distro page ? Goodness!!


I was honestly going to join the team of arabeyes after my conversation with Nadim. But good thing I did not because I do not think I would not love to be part of this anyway.

Now also I can see Linux-Egypt is good partner and having the same behaviour I guess I should be out of here as well. Have fun defining the arabic standards.

Good Luck guys here and in Arabeyes .. sorry for trying to do anything ..

aren't we being a bit paranoid here??

all he said about you was
>As far as our RedHat guy here goes, I am not exactly sure what he is
>leading. We tried to figure out what linux-me is all about and we are still not
>sure Perhaps a more focused plan and a more transparent agenda

maybe the word transparent agenda sounded like he was accusing you of having a hidden one
I'm sure this was not the intention.
it is true that one can find out very little about the RedHat Arabization Project from the linux-me website.

>we have to have an intermidate person to go between the users and RedHat.

I know you did not say this, I know this is not your position but that was after exchaning a couple of emails, a phone call and an IRC session.
but the fact is it is not that obvious.

nobody is attacking you and the demand for more info is just 3asham

cheers,
Alaa

It seems that we have struck a chord here. No one is attacking anyone. I will be plain (as I always have been). At first I was delighted to see an effort such as Linux-ME. Then I was unable to understand the plan. In other words, I see a project but I don't understand what it's going to do. I can see what the overall goal is but I don't see how this goal is intended to be reached. That is what I call mysterious about it.

Before Arabeyes became what it is, it was called Aunyx. We had the same exact problem. We started out and had our overall objective before our eyes -- but we did not have a clear plan as to how to proceed. This is the main difference between most Arabization efforts in the past and Arabeyes today. A clear and focused plan to reach objectives.

We are talking about two different issues. Yes, RH would say we do not want to include application X because application Y already performs the same essential functions. That is fine (I would think the user should have more options, but RH is entitled to its own policy and I have no right to demand it to change since I am not a RH user anyway). What I am trying to say is that this is not something Arabeyes is terribly concerned about. What we are concerned about is overall Arabic support.

Let me give you an example -- Arabic VIM patches have been official as of version 6.2. In Debian, we have found that it was compiled without the Arabic feature enabled. We filed a bug report on Oct. 20th. Nothing happened since then (until yesterday). I got on IRC and happed to find the maintainer. He didn't know how to enable Arabic support to begin with (it is not exactly obvious). I showed him how and he added Arabic support. This is the kind of Arabic support we would like to see with other distributions (including RH). Whether they elect to include Katoob or Quran or Duali or any other Arabeyes project is a whole different issue.

I am not sure what takes 2 years exactly. If you are referring to the distro project's starting date you may be misguided. It began on that date, yes.. however, it was primarily in support of HaydarLinux. We did not start to engage with distro's until recently -- mainly because Arabic support was not ready yet to start asking distro's to enable it in its different aspects.

I am still not sure what you mean by translations or mainstream. In the Open Source community what is mainstream is what is most popularly used. I think that is quiet obvious and I don't need to point that out to you or anyone else. As far as translations are concerned, I am personally not half-satisfied with the current results. I believe Arabeyes could do better than that -- but I also believe that Arabeyes should receive some form of official help in this regard. Unfortunately that has not been easily available.

However, if you are referring to the way in which we manage translation projects -- absolutely. However, we have _always_ been open to suggestions. In fact, you would be amazed at how quickly we adjust when someone makes a concrete suggestion. Especially when that someone is willing to put in the work for it. In other words, if A suggests that we do X instead of Y -- and declares that he/she is willing to take on the task it is done. If A is expecting B to take on the task then it may take a little longer. If A is unable to define X to begin with, then Y will continue to be.

Overall, I think you have completely misunderstood me. We are still waiting for the list of issues and concerns you have -- because believe me, we do rely heavily on such feedback. I will give you an example:

We have always had this complaint about Arabizing the Arabeyes website and that it was very odd to have the very same people who champion Arabization with a site that includes no Arabic. We have always been FOR Arabizing the website but simply lacked the resources -- no one had the time to do it. It is a very simple problem. When people come and complain about it, they are suggesting X instead of Y. We say fine, are _you_ willing to do it. They step back and say, who? me? And so we go back to square 1. Recently we have had individuals who have taken on the task to do it. It is actually being worked on as we speak.

I am not aware of anyone who is 'concerned' about Linux-ME. I will tell you why I am interested in Linux-ME. When I see someone who has put an obvious considerable amount of work to rally a certain cause that I have been rallying for some time -- I think to myself, gee.. let's get together with these people. We could probably speed things up here a little. However, I seem to sense some resuctance in doing so. When you had your IRC session on #arabeyes our conclusion was (and despite the fact that I was not present I was informed of the end-result) is that you will submit a list of items you consider to be issues and concerns regarding how Arabeyes has been doing things. That is great -- it's a step in the right direction. We look forward to that and still do.

In either case, it is entirely up to you what the appropriate couse of action to take is. However, it would be a great service to us to write-up that list in order to give us the opportunity to correct anything that may need or require adjusting.

Regards

salamo 3likom

Does any one here can forget that he is an Arabic Person??
will we write a lot of word in another subject while i write this question to unite our efforts to make a big thing..
is here a kind man?
Egypt, Arabs will still at a the bottom of the stack
did you hear about linux-redflah??
China blocks foreign software use in gov't !!
Regala :)
check this link
http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/applications/0,39001094,39146335,00.htm

plz members understand our situation

we need to depend on ourselfs

linux redflag is ready now
http://www.redflag-linux.com/eindex.html
the desktop is avail for download
chain make thier linux and egypt look for arabization !!!!
and did not succeded in it
:mad:
plz stop that thread.ana makhno2
i want to be TOS
salam

interesting point of view hashim, well the point is who will support such projects?
i mean freelance job is nice and everything but doesn't actually provide living, no big originizations are/will be supporting this.
you want it you do it yourself i guess...
+ do we actually need another distro? what's so wrong with arabizing redhat/debian/gentoo/{your fav distro}?
i mean oh yeah its the official linux-egypt os, it's so sexy and l33t!

get real, i for one not gonna use an arabic gui, also i'm sure alot of people won't either + the people who would use it are not willing to pay/help making it so...
Free here doesn't mean free of charge, it means Freedom.
i just had to say that...
one final note, i been awake for awhile so i probably didnt make much sense.
peace

salamo 3likom
oneOfone,
i did not use an arabic GUI before and i think i will not do it
so,
forget about GUI Arabization
my favorit destro is redhat till now
i don't know who can support this project, you have a correct point of view. Chaina Gov who support the redflag project
on the other hand our gr8 gov involve MS, Oracle in building the e-gov system.
it is a hope to do it.
but did any one start!

Isn't it annoying when you find people defending their favourite distro just like defending their homes.

Can someone justify why there are 200+ distros out there ?
It's because choosing a distro is a matter of taste. Just like choosing a text editor, just like choosing an IDE, just like choosing a T-shirt (btw,did anyone find any tux t-shirts in egypt?) .

So please move on from the distro wars.
BTW, RedHat, Im sure the redhat distro is amazing, but it sure has some downsides, which explains all the community patches/suggestions...etc.


(Go gentoo... :D )
Maher ;)

Hashim:
Then join www.linux-me.org team.
They are working to improve the Arabic support in RedHat.

Regards
Mohamed Eldesoky

Hashim,

I think this discussion is a very useful one. If we do not allow ourselves to openly discuss things (and allow for differences) then there is no point in doing anything. Misunderstandings often happen due to the fact that people don't communicate directly and end up with perceived notions of what the other side has in mind. It is better to discuss things together and involve the community.

The effort to unite all forces has been on-going for the past two years. Arabeyes has been there for a long time. I'm not sure how you can miss it ;)

However, every now and then you will find individual efforts such as linux-me that spring up. In the past they either merge with Arabeyes or go into mortal silence. This is because at this stage it is important to centralize Arabization efforts, IMHO. However, if a project is so very distro-centric, it might be better to be on its own (while coordinating with Arabeyes).

I am not aware that linux-me involves anyone other than Sherif (didn't know there were more people involved -- who are they?). But, if this project is to take on a seriousness about it, by all means, I would personally fully support it. At the end of the day, all we want is an accelerated adoption of Arabic support on all distro's.

Never underestimate the need to openly communicate -- at least that is our attitude in Arabeyes.

OneofOne,

I couldn't agree more. That is why we have the 'ditros' project -- which is aimed at targeting distro's and supporting them in any way possible to add Arabic support. RH is one of them.

You may not want to use an Arabic GUI (I don't.. it's a matter of personal preference). However, there are many people who would.

But as far as an 'arabic' distro goes, we put together the Arabbix linux distribution. It is fully Arabized, Arabic GUI (you can disable the Arabic GUI at boot-up, btw), etc. -- based on Morphix, based on Debian.

Regards

mohamed el zobir...
thnx for your message
i joined the arabeyes from a short time
alaa told me about it later,
really it is a good project.. real work. i did not miss it

El Zubir .. Nice way of talking, you are acting like a really Arabeyes member. I did not want to be in such conversation, but OK let us take the nice words off the conversation and be specific like what you are requesting.

Facts/Comments:

-Fact #0: Your effort is not Arabization rather than Localization. Name everything the way it should be.
-Comment: Arabeyes acting as if they are invented the arabization, well excuse me here, this is not true. If yes do not point me back to your page, explain here the real work done. I do not see except translation effort (which I do not see it good even), few apps and not yet matured or stable. So I hope that arabeyes members stop acting and claiming they invinted arabization and change their atittude. Talk about Localization not arabization or exaplain in FACTS , PATCH numbers contributed to mainstream, libs , code contributed, this is not anywhere on the site I am afraid.

- Fact #1: >> elzubeir: I will be plain (as I always have been). ??!
- Commnet: I do not see that, stop the story way of talking, and talk engineering maybe then I can understand.

- Fact #2: >> elzubeir: Before Arabeyes became what it is,...
- Comment: What it is now? CVS with some translations, and 3 or 4 apps which are not stable or matured yet? pointing to external projects? No vaulable infromation of educating ppl about arabization, no development doc about how to do a real programming and how to contribute ? I do not see anything more than that.

- Fact #3: RedHat Localization
- Comment: The project was raised here on Linux-Egypt or announced by myself before Arabeyes do talk or do anything, Check dates on threads here , yet it was not called Arabization, because Arabic & RTL is there with known issues and work around. So Linux-ME is not copying. Check your Mailing list also about dates when you started to talk about it, this is to make it clear to the ppl here. I saw issues on the way you guys do work, also a big atittude problem. Arabeyes rushed a page announcing RH Localization , till now what is the activities , NONE except a modified doc to add fonts, ...etc.

- Fact #4: Linux-ME is not only Sherif
- Comment: There are a list of members, Desoky is one of them, ppl from ITI, ppl from CS in Cairo Univ, 4 members from Dubai, and more, do you need a list or something ?

- Fact #5: First Arabic Distro.
- Comment: I did mentioned some of the issues about Hayder and the fraud and violation of copyright of M$ fonts, and GPL violation. Yet, it is one of the broudly Arabeyes projects.

- Fact #6: VIM Patches
- Comment: The way I understand it , the way you talked in the thread about the patch, and on ur site, sound like Arabeyes did contribute the patch to VIM and it is there. I checked VIM site, and the patch set, I found no reference to arabeyes or contributed code from anyone on arabayes. I might misunderstood, or could not find the contribution, please list where is the patch and what effort Arabeyes made here.

- Fact #7: Lack of accurate information
- Comment: List all contributions and keep referenaces on main stream to keep the user infromed what you did.

- Fact #8: >> ....merge with Arabeyes or go into mortal silence
- Comment: Arabeyes was there for long time, yes, what are the accomplishment plz ? Please STATE everything you guys did, and let us dicuss it here then one by one so either I change my mind here or show my point of view is right. Why should everything on one location, for God sake, if Linux and its apps was on one location it would die long time ago. Check any Lang even the Chinese and Hebrew, there is NO ONE PLACE, FREE as FREEDOME, if there is no more than one place there will be nothing. You still have Arabeyes atittude that if it is not Arabeyes they gonna die anywhere because Arabeyes is the main arabization !! Again use the right words there, not arabization rather than localization and developers doing arabic apps.

- Fact #9: Distro Project
- Comment: Before issuing a distro project, solve all the issues and know how to maintain a distro. Who will mainatain and how to update, and .........etc It is not showing that I can modify Live-CD to have arabic fonts and boot it with arabic. It is not about forking a from a distro to have fonts.

Mr. Sherif,

There is no reason to be worked up here. We are trying to have an open discussion. I think you bring up very good issues and well worth addressing. Of course I will write like a true Arabeyes member, I've been doing it for too long for my own good ;)

I will address your points as we go along:

#0 -- I am not aware of Arabeyes ever acting as if we 'invented' Arabization. In fact, we do note that it is not a new idea and others have been there before. Check our 'About' section to see for yourself. Also, localization is a subset of Arabization. I believe contributing patches to mainstream applications (such FVWM2, VIM, LyX, mlterm, etc.) count for Arabization.

#1 -- no comment.

#2 -- Mr. Sharif, if you will have the patience for one more week I will be done issuing my second review on the state of Arabization. It is a critical review of Arabeyes' work (and Arabization in general). It will point out the specifics that succeeded and the areas where we need to exert more effort. If you cannot wait, you can review it as I write it (but by no means is it endorsed as an official Arabeyes document yet) --

http://www.arabeyes.org/~elzubeir/state/index.html


#3 -- RH Arabic support specifically? Not really. Again, the issue, we all know. The goals we all share. The means, however, are not clear. To tell you the truth, I am personally not interested in RH. However, it is the collective objective to ensure Arabic support in major distributions. We have been discussing this issue before Linux-Egypt existed, but yes, we have not done anything significant about it. Our work currently does not involve much. It is a matter of documentation.

We are not talking about HOWTO's and Guides here. We are talking about documenting the status report. We are doing the same thing for Mandrake and SuSe. So, after all, what you would like to do with Linux-Me could be completely unrelated to what we are doing -- and that is why all I have been asking is -- What are you really going to do?

#4 -- Good. I did not know that. And yes, I would like to see a list and some contacts. Specially for those in Dubai. I have been talking to some people here who are very interested in starting a LUG and willing to fund it and sponsor it. So, people in Dubai most certainly interest me (but for different reasons).

#5 -- HaydarLinux is _not_ an Arabeyes project. Do not misunderstand it. If it were, it would have had its own project page. HaydarLinux, like any other Linux distribution is something we would like to support and help in any capacity we can. I am not aware of any licensing violations, and if you are aware of any and Haydar has refused to do anything about it, we would (as a community) appreciate you bringing those issues in public.
Arabeyes relationship with HaydarLinux are confined to providing a development infrastructure for HWM (Haydar Window Manager). We were hoping that he would utilize that to attract developers but I think he did not make good use of the facilities available. We can't force people to do things, we can only suggest and encourage.


#6 -- Heheh. Nadim Shaikli (with whom you have chatted with on #arabeyes) is the one who contributed the patch. If you do a search on arabeyes.org for 'bram vim' you would see emails from Bram himself about it. You can cross-reference those on the vim-dev lists if you like. This is definitely the first time anyone has questioned our integrity by suggesting we are claiming things we have not done.

#7 -- Noted. We try to do that. Unfortunately sometimes it is a small patch and we don't specifically mention it.

#8 -- Look #2

#9 -- Actually Arabbix is not what you describe. As for the fork, we are not even sure we want to fork from Morphix (the discussion has begun at some point and we have people opposing a fork, others calling for it -- the matter is still in the air). Arabbix is a preconfigured, localized Arabic linux distributioin. The idea is to have a Live-CD linux distribution, with a full Arabic interface (localization), including all applications that are patched but with patches not yet accepted, applications that are Arabized (and with patches in the mainstream), as well as home-brewed Arabeyes applications.

All in all, Mr. Sharif, I think you are a little confused about the nature of the Arabeyes project and I hope that this would clear up some of those misconceptions you may have.

Regards

the thing RedHat you've been told all this before, any reason for not believing it??

cheers,
Alaa

Salamo 3alaikom,

I see both views as two views that do not want to go hand in hand. I don't know why this is happening. Why don't we define what is Arabization and What is Localization? I guess that both candidates have their good point of view. I guess that organizing efforts in arabization will get more fruits rapidly.

Salam.

> I see both views as two views that do not want to go hand in hand. I don't know why this is happening.

Because you are missing something ? ;-)

Originally posted by uniball
> I see both views as two views that do not want to go hand in hand. I don't know why this is happening.

Because you are missing something ? ;-) Salamo 3alaikom,

What do u think I am missing?

Salam.

I wanted to say Maybe.

Originally posted by uniball
I wanted to say Maybe.

Salamo 3alaikom,

/me messek fil kelma. What do think I might be missing ya Uni?

Salam.

First of all, I am a member of the Arabeyes project. In fact, I am the one following the Red hat arabization issue there (in the project distro).
I believe that we do too much talk and little work. For me, the simple points to be laid are:
- We need Arabized Linux
- Red hat is one of the most widely distributed distros (and I personally like it).
- Being free software, everybody is entitled to make as much improvements as he can.
- Arabeyes is a single community that does the largest share of work on arabizing linux applications

I have actually contacted before the redhat-arabic project at sourceforge and was diverted to the administrator of linux-me. It was suggested that some kind of coordination could be done, but we went nowhere.

I prefer to have this job done under the Arabeyes umbrella as it can be part of the total job done there. In particular, this dispenses with the need to coordinate with projects like Akka, katoob, ITL, Khotot, as external projects. In fact, some rpms have been made for some programs that were tested in Redhat 8.0 and 9. The second thing is that the work overlap with the job of arabization of Mandrake which is taking place at arabeyes and could make use and be useful to projects like Arabbix and the arabic port of Free BSD. Other things is that coordination with KDE and GNOME arabization efforts is clearly facilitated from within the community that does those efforts.

By the way, I don't have anything against other distros. If Arabbix is going to be the best one, so be it. And I expect that all good. And I will certainly use any genuine redhat arabized product issued by linux-me or other group. It will simply spare me the trouble.

I am making myself clear as I don't have to repeat this time and again.

I will have the trouble of answering questions about the distro project, though. Which is not forking any single distro, by the way.

Best wishes,
karouri

Any coordination is welcome, certainly.

Salamo 3alaikom,

The problem is that Redhat (the user) is not convinced with the role that Arabeyes plays in Linux arabization trials. How to convince him to do Fedora arabization under Arabeyes umbrella? This is not needed though. Centralization for Linux is not needed. Coordination is the thing needed.

Salam.