Arabic 864

[Lynn Bender]

I apologize if this isn't the right list.

I have some documents in IBM 00864. I have
been unable to read them on a Arabic-enabled
Windows 2K machine. It looks like Windows
is defaulting to the 1256 code page. What do I
need to do to render the 864 codepage properly?

Also, are there any email lists which deal specifically
with Arabic computing?

Thanks in advance,

Lynn Bender
Austin, TX

[Markus Scherer]

You could use ICU to convert from ibm-864 to Unicode, and use the Windows
Unicode APIs to process and display your text.

See
http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/
http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/conversion.html

Windows itself may have a converter for 864. Check the Windows
MultiByteToWide() API and http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/

Please note that some Arabic text is stored in visual order, while Unicode
text is stored in logical (keystroke) order. You may need to run an
"inverse" Bidirectional algorithm after conversion. ICU has functions for
that (ubidi.h), but they may not yield perfect results because of the
nature of the problem.

You may also need to normalize or "unshape" your characters, i.e., go from
shape-specific character codes (like "final form") to "real" characters
(which are shape-generic). See ICU's u_shapeArabic() function (ushape.h).

Best regards,
markus


Markus Scherer IBM GCoC-Unicode/ICU San José, CA
markus....@us.ibm.com (also for SameTime)





"Lynn Bender" <lbe...@datajunction.com>
Sent by: icu-chars...@www-124.southbury.usf.ibm.com
2002-03-18 11:46
Please respond to "Lynn Bender"


To: <icu-ch...@www-124.southbury.usf.ibm.com>
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Subject: Arabic 864

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