Dealing with the pain associated with Arabic documentation
Sulaiman Mustafa
come from constantly needing to switch keyboard layouts when writing
content in arabic, and defining content/specifying layout in english.
As a solution, I would like to suggest a new xml-ish markup language
similar to docbook but is tailored to GATOG's activity. The main reason
preventing this proposed language from being XML compliant (or using
DOCBOOK for that matter) is the default Arabic keymaps. The standard
arabic keymap does not include the '/' character thus rendering XML (and
anything following this format) impractical for our purpose. Also, to my
knowledge, DOCBOOK does not easly allow two versions (arabic and
english) of the same section or element.
This new language can be used as a neutral container from which many
specific formats can be derived. Initially, only HTML4 will be
implemented (available as an entire page or starting at the div level
for easy embedding).
General goals are:
1. Define a specification for an Arabic-friendly markup language
that does not require the user to change keymaps.
2. Implement this specification
This project will remain unannounced anywhere else until a working
example is implemented.
First let's discuss what features are needed in this language (aside
from having multiple versions per markup element). what would make your
life easer when writing arabic articles?
