IBM announced the availability of Arabic support in core elements of Linux. The technology for running Arabic natively on Linux was unveiled at GITEX 2002 in Dubai, the region’s largest technology trade show. The Arabic support in Linux is a result of a massive effort by the project team at IBM’s Egyptian Technology Development Center in Cairo.
The team in Egypt has successfully adapted the core components that are crucial to make Linux capable of handling Arabic text properly, and has released a number of important standards and applications, now placed into the hands of the open source community.
The Arabised support, developed by IBM, includes adaptations to key parts of the user interface and input/output handling software (the Layout Engine), as well as Arabization of basic applications such as text editing and mail handling.
Through the process of Arabizing these core components of the Linux operating system, IBM also customized some of its products to support the Arabic language as well as adding enhancements to some other non-IBM products.
The new Layout Engine developed by IBM contains six different layout APIs, which handle the reordering and shaping of the Arabic text. Adding the Layout Engine to Linux means that any developer can download these APIs from the Internet to add Arabic Language support to his/her application.
IBM’s development center in Cairo has been driving a coordinated effort to share information and progress amongst the different localization groups working on the Arabization of Linux in the region. IBM has taken the initiative to help ensure that the various efforts complement each other, and that there is a free exchange of information on challenges faced, progress achieved, and very importantly, the terminology used, resulting in interoperability between the various approaches. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
