[FriBidi] Arabic shaping, testing needed

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi all,

It's still 2005.  I have committed some final bits to the
fribidi2 module that finishes Arabic shaping support in the
library.

What remains to do is to add a new remove_bidi_marks function
that goes with all the changes.  I'm not still sure about the
API, thinking about it.  And I'm finishing updating the
command-line tool to use this new API.

The codebase is backwards compatiable with 0.10 series of
releases of FriBidi.  There are a bunch of deprecated functions
though, among them is the infamous fribidi_log2vis!  Remember,
that function only worked for one-line paragraphs.  I'm not still
sure whether I want to have a wrapper for one-line paragraphs.
Most probably not.  In fact I'm not even sure whether to provide
wrapper functions for pre-line-breaking and post-line-breaking
stuff.  The current API is pretty lowlevel, something like 6
calls may be needed.  See fribidi_log2vis implementation in
fribidi2/lib/fribidi-deprecated.c for how things are supposed to
work.

The deprecated log2vis function does Arabic shaping too now.  So
without touching mplayer at all, I got it shape Arabic, just by
installing this FriBidi from CVS.  It has the usual problem of
one-line paragraphs though.  Here is a sample commandline to use
with mplayer to play subtitles in Arabic script:

mplayer -utf8 -fontconfig -font Roya


I would like to get some feedback before I make a release.
Things to test are:

  - Confirm that your FriBidi-using applications keep running
correctly with this new FriBidi (that you build from CVS.)

  - Skim thorough the API, see if it makes sense.  The API is
depicted here:

    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fribidi/2005-September/000439.html

  - Any suggestions about what the version number should be?


Quick feedback is pretty much appreciated,

Cheers,

--behdad
http://behdad.org/

"Commandment Three says Do Not Kill, Amendment Two says Blood Will Spill"
	-- Dan Bern, "New American Language"