Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic Linux/Unix support

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Tue 18 Jun 2002
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1) Subject:Arabic Linux/Unix support

-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date:  18 Jun 2002
From:Nadim Shaikli <nadim at arabeyes.org>
Subject:Arabic Linux/Unix support

We'd like to inform you that we've been looking into and working hard on
Arab'ising various common linux/unix software packages for the past few
months and have had some success stories with more to come.  The reason
we're contacting you is simple - we __NEED__ your help (in programming,
suggestions, opinions, development, support, direction, translation,
etc).

We've done quite a bit of Internet surfing to see what's available in
terms
of Arabic support and what we've found is somewhat distressing -- there
have
been a number of projects undertaken that were either dropped or
completed
with the authors, unfortunately, moving on (well, disappearing); we're
trying to remedy this problem, among others.  We'd like to further along
this noble cause and it's come to our attention that you might be
interested
in the work we're undertaking; thus, we'd like to invite you to visit our
new site,

         http://www.arabeyes.org     (as in arabize :-)

which we're hoping will become a rallying point to finding all the
necessary
info required to start/continue/finish Arabic support to anything that
has
to do with linux/unix now and in the future (with and without authors
disappearing, this site and community will *continue* :-).  We've
committed
to hosting an anonymous CVS server, a question/answer database, a fonts
collection, a links section (if you'd like us to list your RELEVANT site,
let us know), various mailing-lists (based on need), news, ... and of
course
software :-) all under the Open Source umbrella (GPL license).  The point
is to link-up all the efforts out there and to provide a means and a
forum
to talk and to help each other out (we're trying to rid ourselves from
fragmentation).

We're hoping this will be a grass-roots effort in which decisions are
made
by consensus and by the general feel and attitude of participants.

We currently have 4 mailing-lists grouped in the following manner,

  announce  - Software releases, newsletters, important news
  general   - general discussion topics relating to Arabising software
  developer - software coding issues, C/C++/perl/java/etc (development
work)
  doc       - translation, localisation issues (look-n-feel)

We'd like to invite you to read our archived lists to which we're hoping
you'd consider subscribing so as to lend all of us a helping hand,

         http://www.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo

consider looking at 'general' first since it has a wider focus.
You should subscribe to 'announce' at a minimum since it gets the
least amount of traffic and will keep you informed of any new
developments.

PLEASE NOTE - we're not intending this effort to turn into or become a
political/religious/spiritual/commercial forum (that will not be
tolerated).
We just want to see Arabic and linux commonplace and will participate in
major OpenSource efforts to augment their needs and to provide
fixes/patches
to existing programs as well as to start our own (we want our work/code
to make it to the 'main' branches of packages we concentrate on).  We're
very committed to this effort and are not simply intending to complain;
we fully intend to code and get dirt under our fingernails :-)

Our motto has been dictated to us - 'if you can't help yourself, then
don't expect others to help you !!'.  We urge you to rise to the
challenge and lend a helping hand.

Many thanks & we look forward to hearing from you on www.arabeyes.org

  - The arabeyes.org Team

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End of Arabic-L:  18 Jun 2002

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