On Nov 29, 2004, at 9:58 PM, SteveKing wrote:
> gar wrote:
>
>> I'm working on a project involving production and translation of
>> documents from English to Arabic and sometimes the other way around.
>> This involves 20+ people scattered around the world. Up to now we've
>> used MS Word. Version control has been a nightmare.
>
> No matter what version control system you're using, as long as you're
> using MS Word it will always be a nightmare (kind of), because you
> can't merge MS Word documents in an easy way.
Amen. I've almost convinced my boss that XML is the way to go, but
there's that monster "but everybody knows how to use Word" hurdle to
get over.
>
>> Today I make the pitch to the manager that we migrate to Subversion
>> (tortoiseSVN client) to handle VC and XML as our data format. This
>> will work fine for English, but we also need Arabic support. I can
>> handle translating the UI strings, but currently Subversion doesn't
>> seem to like log messages in Arabic. I haven't tried using Arabic for
>> properties yet.
>
> Aren't the log messages shown in arabic when you use TSVN? If not, how
> do they show up? Maybe you have to choose a different font in the
> settings dialog (to a font which has arabic chars in it).
>
Yes, sorry, I had a problem with Arabic log msgs on my Mac client and
rashly assumed it was a general subversion problem. It turns out
tortoiseSVN handles them - almost. It stores them ok and they show up
ok in the summary view of log messages, but in the detail panel (where
the entire log message shows) I get question marks. I could send a
screen shot if it would help.
>
> I'm not sure, but isn't arabic written from right to left? In that
> case just translating the strings in TSVN won't help much. Yes, the
> chars will show up correctly, but still be shown from left to right.
> To achieve RTL we'd have to create a new set of resource files where
> all the dialogs have the RTL flag set. Not much work for one release,
> but a pain in the ass to keep up with the changes we're doing while
> developing...
>
Yes, Arabic is an rtl language. But windows handles it ok, so I think
if I were to create an Arabic .po file the Arabic would display ok.
Might be some sizing issues. I'll let you know when I've had a chance
to test.
> About TortoiseMerge (the diff tool that comes with TSVN): as long as
> the files have the UTF8 BOM's in them, the chars will show up
> correctly (if you've set a arabic char font). But again, the
> right-to-left problem will still be there. I think I can add a button
> wich will switch the TortoiseMerge views from RTL to LTR and
> vice-versa. Will take some time though...
So far I haven't had any luck getting it to display Arabic characters.
It looks like it is doing the diff ok, but the display is gibberish.
I've tried it with a bunch of different fonts to no avail. This is on
Win2K sp5 with Arabic support enabled. Courier New is a monospaced
font with Arabic support, in case you want to give it a try. I can
provide you with a small file of Arabic text if you'd care to
investigate.
Maybe my files are missing the BOM? What's the codepoint, I'll try to
insert it. Still, various tools I use are able to display the Arabic
ok without a BOM (I think).
Regarding RTL alignment: it would be nice, but I can live with
left-aligned text so long as it reads from rtl. If you were going to
implement RTL display alignment, I would suggest linking it with a
property, e.g. SVN:TEXTORIENTATION or the like so that TSVN display
"does the right thing" automatically if you've set the property
correctly. You could also try to guess the dominant alignment base on
Unicode ranges used in the text but that might not be reliable for
texts with mixed languages, and it would be a lot of work I suppose.
My ideal solution is a diff interface that displays Arabic and allows
me to merge and do minor editing.
Thanks,
gregg
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Received on Tue Nov 30 08:45:29 2004