Libre/Halaal Software and Internet Services For Persian and Arabic Users

Globish/English [en]      عربى [ar][Arabic]    فارسی [fa][Farsi/Persian]   

A Free Protocols Foundation (FPF) Project

PersoArabic.org is a project of the Free Protocols Foundation (FPF).

The goals of FPF relevant to Perso-Arabic communication and computing are three fold.

1. Within the existing corrupt Western legal framework of Copyright and Patents, facilitate development of Free Protocols , Halaal/Libre Software and Halaal/Libre Services .
2. Work towards Abolishment of the Western IPR Regime. In:
   The Nature of Poly-Existentials:
   Basis for Abolishment of The Western So-Called Intellectual Property Rights Regime
   ماهیت چند وجودی‌ها:‌
   دال بر لغو آن چه که غربیها نامیده‌اند مالکیت فکری و معنوی
   
   we describe our logic and strategy.
3. Promote development and usage of Halaal حلال Software and Halaal Internet Application Services. Discourage development and usage of Haraam Software and Haraam Internet Application Services. We do this based on an ethical belief system that recognizes responsibility of the engineering profession to society, which in turn demands the Halaal manner-of-existence of Software. See
   Defining Halaal Manner-Of-Existence Of Software
   And Defining Halaal Internet Application Services
   تعريف نرم افزار حلال و تعريف خدمات اينترنتى حلال
   
   for more details. Based on this definition, software and Internet services such as Microsoft Windows, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc, are haraam because their manner-of-existence is proprietary, restricted and internally opaque. Our use of the sensitive words “halaal” and “haraam” are described in:
   Introducing Halaal and Haraam into Globish
   Based on Moral Philosophy of Abstract Halaal
   معرفیِ حلال و حرام به بقیه‌یِ دنیا

Ultimately, we want to arrive at societal policies that are based on the halaal manner-of-existence of software.

Towards the above goals, we engage in the following activities.

Projects

• 1  Halaal Software For Processing Persian and Arabic
• 2  Towards The Halaal/Libre ByStar Digital Ecosystem
• 3  In Focus PersoArabic Software Components
  • 3.1  Emacs:
  • 3.2  Emacs Persian Input Methods
  • 3.3  PersoArabic Fonts:
  • 3.4  TeX, XeLaTeX, XePersian:
  • 3.5  XeLaTeX to HTML Conversion With Bidi Support:
  • 3.6  PersoArabic Spell Checkers:
  • 3.7  PersoArabic Dictionary / Thesaurus:

1  Halaal Software For Processing Persian and Arabic

PersoArabic.org focuses on the mission of FPF in the context of writing, web publishing, communicating and processing in Persian and in Arabic.

Today if you want to write in Farsi or in Arabic, your main choice is Microsoft’s haraam Windows environment. And in the business driven (not societal or engineering driven) western model, Perso-Arabic users are always second class citizens because they represent an insignificant market to the likes of American Microsoft and American Google.

Here we focus on providing a complete and rich environment for Persian and Arabic in the Halaal and Convivial quadrant.

2  Towards The Halaal/Libre ByStar Digital Ecosystem

This work is part of a much bigger picture. An overview of that bigger picture is presented in:

Our use of the term “Digital Ecosystem” is very broad and includes inter-related software, systems, services, content and societal frameworks including: philosophical, moral, societal, social, economic, business and legal pratices – that shape it and are shaped by it.

In the context of PersoArabic, we focus on the following 3 major pieces of software to build a complete communications and computing environment for Persian and Arabic users.

1. Debian GNU/Linux

   Debian’s social contract is consisten with our goals.

2. TeX and XeLaTeX

   XeLaTeX is our choice for multilingual writing and publishing.

3. Emacs

   Emacs is the n’est plus extra editor. Beyond being an editor, emacs is a complete integrated user environment that well accomodates software-service integration. End emacs fully supports Arabic and Persian.

Our approach is to combine and customize these into a fully intgrated environment capable of everything. This includes both:

• A Service Environment named: ByStar Federation of Autonomous Libre Services
  
• A User Environment named: Blee (By* Libe Emacs Environment)

This approach is very different from attempts at localizing GNU/Linux desktop environements with Farsi or Arabic - - such as FarsiWeb or Farsi/Arabic localization of Gnome and other Linux applications.

3  In Focus PersoArabic Software Components

Main software components the we focus on for extending with additional PersoArabic capabilities, include:

3.1  Emacs:

Emacs24 has full bidi. But it has not been released yet. You can download emacs24 here. Two input methods for farsi are included in emacs24. You can obtain the latest quail input method here. You then "select-input-method" "farsi" or "farsi-translit"

3.2  Emacs Persian Input Methods

To facilitates writing in Persian, we have designed a number of input methods. These are described in:

3.3  PersoArabic Fonts:

We maintain a repository of halaal/libre fonts that support well the arabic script.

3.4  TeX, XeLaTeX, XePersian:

XePersian over XeLaTeX are our choices for writing and publishing.

3.5  XeLaTeX to HTML Conversion With Bidi Support:

HaVeA is our choice for producing HTML output.

3.6  PersoArabic Spell Checkers:

A good persian spell checker is part of debian

apt-get -y install aspell-fa

3.7  PersoArabic Dictionary / Thesaurus:

All Blee dictionary services are dict based. We are actively looking for:
Persian Dehkhoda dictionary.
Tasks: convert dehkhoda’s loghatnameh into dict format. create a deb package for it.
xfardic - - deb http://parsix.org/packages ramon main - - apt-get install xfardic
And english to persian dictionaries.
And Persian to english dictionaries.