[Fsf-friends] Freeing perspectives with local solutions... Arab Eyes makes a dent

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

http://www.tacticaltech.org/asiasource/blog

Freeing perspectives with local solutions... Arab Eyes makes a dent

Mohammed Sameer of Cairo, Egypt -- who'll be 24 in March 2005 -- is actually a 
graduate from the faculty of pharmacy and has been using Free Software since 
the late 1999. Today, he's one of the team of ten or so enthusiasts who are 
working to make computing more relevant to millions using the Arabic script 
across the globe.

Called 'Arabeyes', the project could benefit a large pool in West Asia. "I 
suppose (it would potentially benefit) all people using Arabic or Arabic-script 
languages, in Middle East and the Urdu-speaking people (of South Asia). Then, 
there are people speaking languages like Pashto too(using a similar script)," 
says he. "This could be a pool of maybe 400 million people," says he.

As of now, where has Arabeyes reached?

  Sameer says it has currently "100% Arabised" Gnome with quality assurance, and 
has touched about 99% in terms of KDE Arabisation, but has to pass through the 
quality assurance team team. Open Office1 has been completely translated, and 
they are now working on Open Office2. FireFox?, translation is there too, and 
they are waiting for Mozilla's CVS account.

That's regarding translation.

Regarding software, a team-leader called Nadim Shaikli is one of the core team, 
with the aid of another member, introduced Arabic to Vim. Currently they're 
re-working on 'Akka' project (which basically a software layer on top of the 
console so that people can read and write Arabic). Another project is Bicon, 
which is supposed to replace Akka when completed.

"We are trying to create an Arabic spellchecker, Duali. But it's still not 
complete," says Sameer.

What does he see as the major tasks sill to be completed?

"We had (taken up work on) a live CD to show Arabic work. The original 
maintainer isn't free. I took maintainership, but nothing has been completed 
yet. I have to finalise various projects and we need to complete whatever we're 
doing. Then, we should try to be more involved with testing various products 
for Arabic support," says he.

Basically they see themselves as try to fix what's missing.

  "I don't think we have much things technically missing. But what I see as 
really annoying is that we're missing some important standards. For example, we 
don't have a standard on how to normalise various Arabic letters -- diacritics, 
the some small marks on the letters. We don't know whether we're supposed to 
write dots below a letters or not. These are some small things, but they're 
really annoying," he says with the frankness of a techie eager to do a good 
job, as against the attitude of a salesman proffering a flawless product.

How did he find the Arabeyes team?

This team was implementing an Arabaic console application called 'Akka'. It 
uses corba to do a client-server. It was then that he found Arab Eyes. Then, 
they started working on the QaMoose? Project. "It was basically an online 
dictionary, since we then didn't have an open source dictionary," says Mohammed 
Sameer. (20A)

"It was a CGI script or Perl with the whole interface, where we could input 
Arabic and English terms, so it would ease various translations of software," 
he recalls.

They also feel the need for a standard for sorting.

  Their team is just around ten-members strong. (There are over 500 registered 
users, but approx 10 are very active, on a daily basis.) Could such a small 
group make such a difference to how so many people do their computing? "Two 
people, (Free Software Foundation guru) Richard M Stallman and (the father of 
the Linux kernel) Linus Torvalds could change the life of millions. They were 
two; we are around ten. If they can do this, I hope we too can achieve 
something," says he, with cautious optimism.

Asked why the Arab would could simply not take the option of using 
proprietorial software, Sameer laughs: "That's a religious question," says he. 
"We're really focussing on open source software."

Sometimes, Free/Libre? and Open Source Software works better. Says he: "We have 
various GUI tools and text editors that can align writings to the right or 
left, according to the script used. These use the bidi algorithm."

(*)nix also uses Unicode. This means one can write document which uses multiple 
languages without any problem.

SOUTH ASIA AND URDU: Sameer says he had been contacted by people from South 
Asia too, who wanted a solution for the Urdu language that is also written 
right-to-left. Unfortunately, he says, they lost contact.

  Says he: "At Arabeyes, we would like to know the state of Urdu. I think Farsi 
(from Iran) would also benefit from this work, the Farsi people have been very 
helpful for the last few years."

What's his tip for those wanting to work in the field of localisation? "They 
should really understand the language needs, and then, they will start hunting 
around for what's missing and what's not. And then, I don't knkow.... I'd 
really be glad to help anyone," he adds.

Sameer has been using computers "since I was in primary school" when his 
Attari-manufactured computer was used to program Basic. Says he: "My father 
helped me. He knew this was the thing I loved. I just graduated and worked for 
the Pharmacy qualification. I don't know anything about it," he adds.

Sameer is one of the admins responsible for the website and various activities 
of Egypt's user groups. Egypt has two major LUGs, Eglug and Linux-Egypt.

Sameer can be emailed at msameer at foolab.org or msameer at eglug.org 
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