[emacs-bidi] Re: merge emacs-bidi into the main tree

[Janusz S. Bień]

On Thu, 07 Aug 2003  address@hidden wrote:


[...]

> Date: 07 Aug 2003 16:29:32 +0200
> From: Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>
> Subject: [emacs-bidi] Re: merge emacs-bidi into the main tree

[...]

> I'd prefer to call for volunteers to continue the work I started,
> namely, change the display engine to support bidirectional editing
> without processing batches of buffer's text.  (I can elaborate if
> there's enough interest.)  I have some unpolished stand-alone code
> that does bidi reordering sequentially, which should fit very well
> into the Emacs display engine, but someone needs to take that code and
> integrate it into Emacs, since I probably won't have time any time
> soon enough for this to be practical.
> 
> If anyone steps forward willing to begin hacking the display code, I
> promise to help in any way I can.

I think the number of developers is a monotonic function of the number
of users, and emacs-bidi is already usable!

The best way to widen the users base is to include emacs-bidi in
popular Linux distributions. Therefore I would like to draw your attention to 
the Debian package which I descovered just today.

It is available at

http://www.pipapo.org/www/www/Files/emacsbidi

and can be installed in the standard way with apt-get,
aptitude etc.

Here is its description:

 Package: emacsbidi
 Version: 0.9-1
 Section: editors
 Priority: optional
 Architecture: i386
 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.1-1), libjpeg62, libncurses5 (>= 5.3.20021109-1), xlibs 
(>> 4.1.0)
 Conflicts: 
emacs20,emacs20-dl,emacs21,emacsen-common,emacs21-common,emacs-intl-fonts
 Installed-Size: 79084
 Maintainer: Ayman Negm <address@hidden>
 Description: GNU Emacs with Arabic, Hebrew support
  Emacs-bidi it support UTF-8 and bidi language like
  Arabic, Persian and  Hebrew. It's based on  GNU Emacs21.
  This is a development version and not the official release.
  Please read http://www.m17n.org/emacs-bidi/index.html.

I haven't tested it, because it is the *replacement* for the standard
Gnu Emacs package. An obvious wishlist is to allow emacsbidi to
coexist piecefully with other Emacsen, as it is the case with emacs 20
and emacs 21.

Thanks to official ITP (Intend to Package,
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archive=no&bug=184831),
there is a chance that emacsbidi will be included in the future
official Debian distribution.

Best regards

Janusz

-- 
                     ,   
dr hab. Janusz S. Bien, prof. UW
Prof. Janusz S. Bien, Warsaw Uniwersity
address@hidden, address@hidden
http://www.orient.uw.edu.pl/~jsbien/
http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~jsbien/