Balanameh Magazine

[Vafa Khalighi]

Just to let everyone know that, there is a magazine called `balanameh' that is being published regularly using xepersian package. For details see http://balatarin.com/balanameh and http://blog.balatarin.com/2009/07/12/balanameh/

ُIf you actually look at the properties of the PDF file, you will notice that they use old version of xepersian.

--
Vafa

[Vafa Khalighi]

Just a quick note to say that I (as the author of xepersian) have had nothing to do with this magazine and I have no responsibility for the contents of this magazine in any way. In fact, balanameh people never have contacted me. After all xepersian is a free software and you can use it in any way you wish.


--
Vafa

[mehdiy]

Hi,

Vafa, thank you for creating this package. Without this package, there
wouldn't
be a Balanameh. Balanameh is one of the few successful examples of
converting web content to magazine format in completely automatic
fashion. We have
been told by several readers that they print out Balanameh for their
elderly parents who
can't use Internet and some people have distributed it during
demonstrations.

I highly recommend this module. It provides easy formatting for
Persian documents and has
very nice fonts.

Best,
Mehdi

[Vafa Khalighi]

No worries.

Your thanks for the fonts goes to Behnam not me.

It also would be nice (absolutely optional) if you somewhere mention that you magazine has been prepared by xepersian or probably display its logo.


--
Vafa

[khordadesabz]

Dear vafa,

Could you please give a clue, how is it possible to use xepersian to
do the same thing ? how to use xepersian in a web application ?

Regards ;)

On Nov 12, 10:44 am, Vafa Khalighi <v...@users.berlios.de> wrote:
> Just to let everyone know that, there is a magazine called `balanameh' that

> is being published regularly using xepersian package. For details seehttp://balatarin.com/balanamehandhttp://blog.balatarin.com/2009/07/12/balanameh/

[Vafa Khalighi]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 12:39 PM, khordadesabz <m_ti...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear vafa,

Hi
 

Could you please give a clue, how is it possible to use xepersian to
do the same thing ? how to use xepersian in a web application ?

I am not sure about the specific details. I guess the best people to ask would be Balatarin people. Also note that xepersian is not a standalone software.

 

--
Vafa

[Hooman Mehr]

If your web application is hosted on a Unix-like operating system
(including BSD/Linux) it should be rather easy.

It is quite straightforward to develop a shell script that would fill
a predefined template from a database and run it through the
publishing engine to produce the PDF via unix shell and (La/Xe)TeX
tools (including xepersian). Such a shell script could be activated as
a CGI or you may run it as a scheduled batch process via cron (or a
similar tool) which would put the produced PDF on a web site or
publish it through a mailing list.

If you are using Windows it is still possible to do, but it looks more
like patchworks and the result would not be as robust. (La/Xe)TeX is a
"unixy" thing after all.

- Hooman

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing

[Vafa Khalighi]

 (La/Xe)TeX is a

"unixy" thing after all.

No, it is not. TeX always have been platform  independent and it will continue to be so.

--
Vafa

[Hooman Mehr]

No offense on TeX intended. Let me elaborate:

TeX is very portable because it uses standard portable C source code and libraries. Although it is portable to all platforms, but this  type of portability is exactly "Unixy" not "Microsofty". 

Microsoft's traditionally tries to make everything dependent on Windows and as a result none-portable. So, for portable applications such as TeX, Microsoft platforms are not a natural fit but unix-like systems are.  

This does not mean that TeX by itself does not run well on Windows. There are very good and stable TeX distributions for Windows with nice GUI front-ends.

But this does not mean that for the specific scenario brought up in the original question, those TeX implementations are the ideal solution.  They are not so well integrated into the rest of the Windows development model (which in a sense specifically calls for none-portable code).

I re-iterate that if you want to use TeX as a service component in a server-side and batch-oriented automated workflow, you will have a more straightforward path on unix-like systems rather than Microsoft Windows. This is not because of any fault of portability of TeX, but because of the very rich and powerful shell programming and batch processing tools that are bundled on any unix-like system, but are extra installs on a typical Windows system.

I am not bashing Windows. It is the best choice in many diverse scenarios, but not in this specific one, sorry. Although Windows is still a possible choice, and if you only have Windows proficiency, it might be the best choice for you, but not the best choice regardless of developer skill.

- Hooman

[Vafa Khalighi]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Hooman Mehr <hooma...@gmail.com> wrote:

No offense on TeX intended.

No offence taken.
 

TeX is very portable because it uses standard portable C source code and libraries.

I guess it is WEB not C. See page x of `TeX: The program' textbook where Knuth says:

``The program in this book was prepared with the WEB system of structured documentation. A WEB program is a pascal program that has been cut up into pieces and rearranged into an order that is easier for a human being to understand.

In other words, WEB programs and pascal programs are essentially the same kind of things, but their parts are arranged differently. You should be able to understand a pascal program better when you see it in its WEB form, if the author of the WEB form has choosen a good order of presentation...''

--
Vafa

[Hooman Mehr]

Thank you for the correction/clarification. 

I mentioned it from the top of my head and I forgot about the Pascal heritage of TeX. 

Your mention of WEB is also interesting, since it is a bit obscure for most readers and collision with the other web, makes it a bit hard for them to Google it. So, let me add that WEB is more than a programming language, it is a programming discipline also called "Literate Programming". It produces both code and documentation from the same source. 

There are variants of WEB that produce other source code. For example, CWEB provides C/TeX output and Cweb provides C/Troff. 

Now you have more keywords if you want to Google it further...

- Hooman

P.S.: We are sliding way off topic. I think we can now safely close this specific branch of discussion. There is nothing Persian about this...

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Thanks Hooman and Vafa for bringing this up :). I don't think it's "way off
topic": TeX-based systems have been a huge part of the Persian computing scene
for the past 15 years, and there's no reason not to introduce younger people
to these.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEB

Cheers,
behdad

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing

[Hooman Mehr]

Thank you Behdad.

I met a friend in the evening who had seen my posts and asked me a
question which might be useful for other list members:

Question:

Are the existing TeX distributions (such as TeX Live) compiled from
Pascal code?

Answer:

No. They are complied from C code with some helper libraries (as I
mentioned in my original post). Pascal is important from a historical
perspective. Today's TeX binaries are produced using Web2C which
translates the original WEB (intended for Pascal) into C source code
which is compiled into the final binary.

While at it, and as you noted, let me draw the attention of the
younger Persian Computing members to the potential role that TeX can
play for them:

The emergence of decent Unicode and "Normal" font (as opposed to
Metafont) support plus Vafa's xepersian re-introduces TeX as an
extremely versatile and powerful Persian typesetting platform.

I highly recommend that you get to know TeX capabilities in general
and the specific (rather new) Persian support facilities (Unicode/
OpenType/xepersian, etc) available for it. Also note that it is
available free of charge on all computing platforms. It's main
drawback is its complexity.

- Hooman

[Vafa Khalighi]

What we are really missing at the moment is a cross-platform bidirectional Unicode editor for composing Tex input documents. I hope that we will get it done very soon.

I also think that when v1.0.4 of bidi and xepersian comes out (perhaps by Norouz),we will have a reliable TeX package for typesetting Persian documents which allows a user to use most of the commonly used latex packages to create  Persian documents.. Unfortunately I just have had time to work on macro programming and have not done anything with fonts and editors. but I actually have been doing all this almost alone whereas FarsiTeX or TeX-e-Parsi had been developed by a group of people and they had done it either as a Bsc project or as a part of the job but basically this has been my spare time activity. The other issue (well there were heaps of them) was that there was no funding available  for the project and I just had to rely on my own time, energy and money but TeX-e-Parsi people or FarsiTeX people were probably financially supported by some institutions.

I should stop winging now.

--
Vafa

[Hooman Mehr]

On Nov 18, 2009, at 7:16 PM, Vafa Khalighi wrote:

> What we are really missing at the moment is a cross-platform
> bidirectional Unicode editor for composing Tex input documents. I
> hope that we will get it done very soon.

I don't think this is strictly necessary. Many platforms already have
descent unicode capable TeX editors. I don't think we need a single
cross-platform editor as long as each platform has its own acceptable
editor. I think we need to focus on fixing issues in each of the
available editors platform-by-platform.

>
> I also think that when v1.0.4 of bidi and xepersian comes out
> (perhaps by Norouz),we will have a reliable TeX package for
> typesetting Persian documents which allows a user to use most of the
> commonly used latex packages to create Persian documents..

Good news.

> Unfortunately I just have had time to work on macro programming and
> have not done anything with fonts and editors. but I actually have
> been doing all this almost alone whereas FarsiTeX or TeX-e-Parsi had
> been developed by a group of people and they had done it either as a
> Bsc project or as a part of the job but basically this has been my
> spare time activity. The other issue (well there were heaps of them)
> was that there was no funding available for the project and I just
> had to rely on my own time, energy and money but TeX-e-Parsi people
> or FarsiTeX people were probably financially supported by some
> institutions.

You need to work on lobbying potential sponsors for their support.
Also, start looking for volunteers among students. This particular
list may not include enough of the intended audience.

Does anybody have a suggestion on how Vafa can get some sort of
support to advance his xepersian project?

- Hooman

[Mostafa Hajizadeh]

> Does anybody have a suggestion on how Vafa can get some sort of
> support to advance his xepersian project?

I know that most of the publishers are looking for a decent publishing
software, and some of them will be ready to pay for it. But that's
just a though and I'm not sure about how we can make it work.

[Vafa Khalighi]

You need to work on lobbying potential sponsors for their support. Also, start looking for volunteers among students. This particular list may not include enough of the intended audience.

The main issue is that I have been in Australia for a long time and have no contact in Iran. On the other hand, doing a TeX project for a student who does not have required knowledge and experiece, is quite heavy.

Does anybody have a suggestion on how Vafa can get some sort of support to advance his xepersian project?

Mahmood Amintoosi is trying to get his university support xepersian and bidi financially but we do not yet know if it will ever be accpted.

--
Vafa

[Roozbeh Pournader]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Vafa Khalighi <va...@users.berlios.de> wrote:
> but I actually have been doing all this almost alone whereas
> FarsiTeX or TeX-e-Parsi had been developed by a group of people and they had
> done it either as a Bsc project or as a part of the job but basically this
> has been my spare time activity. The other issue (well there were heaps of
> them) was that there was no funding available  for the project and I just
> had to rely on my own time, energy and money but TeX-e-Parsi people or
> FarsiTeX people were probably financially supported by some institutions.

For the record:

1. You are definitely right. It's hard to do volunteer work that's not
as appreciated as it should be.

2. Due to my personal knowledge, both FarsiTeX and TeX-e-Parsi were
heavily under-budgeted. Most of the interesting work on FarsiTeX was
based on mine or Behdad's unpaid work, and most of the interesting
work on TeX-e-Parsi was unpaid commercial work by Ahmad Yazdipour
(basically, TeX-e-Parsi work was mostly a huge personal investment by
Mr Yazdipour that was never completely paid for by its customers). So
although I agree it was a bit easier for us, it wasn't very different
from yours. Both efforts were driven by passion, not by cash. And we
paid out of our own pockets or worked unpaid (or underpaid) for most
of the work.

3. I really appreciate what you've done on TeX, Unicode, and Persian.
I don't personally use TeX frequently anymore, so I haven't used your
software yet, but from the impact it's having, I can say this is a
very important piece of the Persian Computing puzzle. Thank you!

Roozbeh

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi Vafa,

In addition to what Roozbeh said, as someone who maintained FarsiTeX for
years, and as a Free Software developer, I also want to add my point of view.

On 11/18/2009 10:46 AM, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>
> I also think that when v1.0.4 of bidi and xepersian comes out (perhaps
> by Norouz),we will have a reliable TeX package for typesetting Persian
> documents which allows a user to use most of the commonly used latex
> packages to create Persian documents.. Unfortunately I just have had
> time to work on macro programming and have not done anything with fonts
> and editors.

Well, unlike the old days, the nice thing about using XeTeX is that generic
Unicode fonts and editors can be used. So there's no need for TeX-specific
fonts and editors anymore.

> but I actually have been doing all this almost alone
> whereas FarsiTeX or TeX-e-Parsi had been developed by a group of people

Maybe. But for the years that I worked on FarsiTeX, it was mostly a one man
show. Over the years many people have contributed to the project (and by
many, I mean maybe 15), but since I've been involved (1999 or 2000) there has
not been an active team. And the project is pretty much unmaintained these
days for the same reasons that you point out.

> and they had done it either as a Bsc project

Yes. But many of those BSc projects never produced any useful code that was
integrated into FarsiTeX itself. As for myself, my BSc project was based on
my FarsiTeX work, but if it was only about getting the BSc project done I
didn't need to spend a year on it.

> or as a part of the job but

One may be able to categorize my FarsiTeX work as part of my job at FarsiWeb.
Though it was never clear. Either way, FarsiWeb never earned a penny from
FarsiTeX. But that's not the point. A huge part of what we did in FarsiWeb
can be categorized as R&D, and while an entity (person or a company, doesn't
matter) does not necessarily earn money from R&D activities, R&D plays a huge
part in building one's competence and reputation.

> basically this has been my spare time activity.

From what I've read you also work as freelance TeX consultant, right? In
that case isn't your contribution to any TeX package part of your R&D? Unpaid
upstream Free Software work is a great way to builds one resume and attracts
clients.

> The other issue (well
> there were heaps of them) was that there was no funding available for
> the project and I just had to rely on my own time, energy and money but
> TeX-e-Parsi people or FarsiTeX people were probably financially
> supported by some institutions.

There used to be talks about getting money for FarsiTeX pretty much every
year. Whether anyone got any money at the end, I don't know. But not me or
Roozbeh or any of the core FarsiTeX developers that I know.

> I should stop winging now.

That's fine. I think you should be really proud of what you have achieved by
XePersian. For all that FarsiTeX and TeX-e-Parsi did, they failed to build a
sustainable community around it. XePersian, in it's short life, is already in
CTAN and starting to get real users. That's a huge step forward. And I
really look forward to finding the time to play with it and contribute back.

Cheers,
behdad


> Vafa

[Vafa Khalighi]

Well, unlike the old days, the nice thing about using XeTeX is that generic
Unicode fonts and editors can be used.  So there's no need for TeX-specific
fonts and editors anymore.

Maybe from my and your perspective but there are still some people around who like to use TeX fonts in addition to use any open type fonts. Also it is true that you can use any Unicode editor but the ones supporting RTL are rare. I am very happy that gedit people have been making it available on windows too.

One may be able to categorize my FarsiTeX work as part of my job at FarsiWeb.
 Though it was never clear.  Either way, FarsiWeb never earned a penny from
FarsiTeX.  But that's not the point.  A huge part of what we did in FarsiWeb
can be categorized as R&D, and while an entity (person or a company, doesn't
matter) does not necessarily earn money from R&D activities, R&D plays a huge
part in building one's competence and reputation.

I was not refering to FarsiTeX here.
 

 From what I've read you also work as freelance TeX consultant, right?  In
that case isn't your contribution to any TeX package part of your R&D?  Unpaid
upstream Free Software work is a great way to builds one resume and attracts
clients.

Yes, I have been a TeX consultant for a long time but that is not my job. I just do it for fun. on the other hand, I am a Plain TeX user not LaTeX user and most of the work, I do,  as a TeX consultant is done purely in Plain TeX not LaTeX. I do not think that I could tell any of my TeX customers that I have been developing bidi or xepersian (and in fact, if I do tell them, they simply ignore it)  because these two are absolutely irrelevant to the work that I do as a TeX consultant. I admit that I tell my customers about other packages and classes that I wrote/maintain if and only if those packages/classes have something to do with the project that I am doing as a TeX consultant.
 

That's fine.  I think you should be really proud of what you have achieved by
XePersian.   For all that FarsiTeX and TeX-e-Parsi did, they failed to build a
sustainable community around it.  XePersian, in it's short life, is already in
CTAN and starting to get real users.  That's a huge step forward.  And I
really look forward to finding the time to play with it and contribute back.

Thanks for your kindness. If FarsiTeX and TeX-e-Parsi were not already present, bidi/xepersian's development would have been mush slower.

--
Vafa

[Vafa Khalighi]

Hi Rouzbeh and others

my apologies for replying late. I have been changing my ISP and have not been online for a while.

 

3. I really appreciate what you've done on TeX, Unicode, and Persian.
I don't personally use TeX frequently anymore, so I haven't used your
software yet, but from the impact it's having, I can say this is a
very important piece of the Persian Computing puzzle. Thank you!

Thanks Rouzbeh. As I said in replying To Behdad's email, FarsiTeX and TeX-e-Parsi have made bidi/xepersian development much easier, so a big thank you goes to you, Behdad, Yazdipour and all who have been involved in doing Persian TeX development.

 

--
Vafa