mapserver-bot
commented
12 years ago Author: dmorissette Date: 2008/03/17 - 20:15 Some useful info from TC Haddad on the mapserver-users list:
The Arabic and Farsi are going to have identical joining issues. So if
your code handles Arabic it *should* cover Farsi no problem.
In general joined letters are used in the middle of a word (like
cursive handwriting in english). Most Arabic words are composed almost
exclusively of joined letters. There is no such thing as "print" vs.
"cursive" - you would never write a multi-letter word using unjoined
letters in Arabic.
Unjoined letters are used when characters stand alone - either because
they are single-letter words, or because certain characters stand
alone by convention when used at the beginning or end of a word (sort
of like bookends).
The joined vs. unjoined version of any letter is stored in the font
just as an English font stores both lower and upper case characters.
Although the Arabic and Farsi look very similar, they do use slightly
different alphabets (some characters (and sounds) exist in Farsi that
don't exist in Arabic - maybe also vice versa).
Reporter: dmorissette Date: 2008/03/17 - 19:59 Trac URL: http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/2549 Ticket #956 added support for right-to-left labels using the FriBidi library, but that still does not support joining of characters.
This ticket is about adding support for joining of characters. Sounds like FriBidi2 will include joining support and would be the way to go.
There was a thread on mapserver-users around 2008-03-12 with some useful information about this: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2008-March/054789.html
and that thread later on moved to mapserver-dev: http://www.nabble.com/Re:-Farsi--right-to-left--labels-td16057385.html