On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 01:50:35PM -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:44:19 -0600, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny@eglug.org>  
> wrote:
>
>>> Get SC unipad and type identical logical input in Arabic and Farsi  
>>> modes.
>>> The makers of Unipad are Iranian and they implement both Arabic and  
>>> Farsi
>>> rules correctly, have keyboards etc.  AFAIK, no other editor implements
>>> the bidi alg as well.
>>
>> I didn't use Unipad that much, but I think Gedit (GTK pased) does a
>> perfect job,
>
> No, it does not ;-)
>
>> I'm not aware of any windows port of it though.
>
> andLinux on W32 is wonderful, no more cygwin etc.
>
>> I'd like to
>> know what features in Unipad (regarding Arabic) that Gedit hasn't.
>
> One example:
>
> The following comes out correctly in Unipad, also in Opera's email  
> composer (don't know how it will look in your client). It does not come  
> out right in Windows Notepad or in gedit. Kate does get it right (and  
> other kde apps as well), as well as OOo:
>
> ==============
> European:
> 18%, 1--3
>
> Arabic:
> ١٨٪، ١--٣
>
> Farsi:
> ۱۸٪، ۱--۳
> ==============

Oh, it is shame that even my terminal (mlterm) renders it right! I think
I'm going to report this :)

>
> See attached as well.
>
> Unipad is designed as a complete unicode utility, and has lots of other  
> nifty features as well, especially for editing Arabic script. Its  
> Arabic-script editing features are truly unique and useful. Eg, I  
> select/edit vowels horizontally not vertically.
>
> Unipad has:
>
> Char Info bar:
> character code value (U+0000)
> character name (if assigned)
> character category (letter, decimal digit, etc.)
> character block (script, collection, etc.)
>
> Extended Char Info bar:
> decimal character code value
> encoded byte sequence (octals)
> bidirectional character type
> decimal digit value (only if the character represents a decimal digit)
>
> Unipad is not a good choice for a programmer's or TeX editor, but in  
> overall unicode editing it is unrivalled, although it has not been 
> updated since Unicode 4.1.0 :-(

Fortunately, thanks to WINE, it does run under Linux, even their web
site lists WINE as one of the supported platforms.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localizer and member of Arabeyes.org team