BiDi problem: Arabic letters won't merge together!

[etieffen]

Well I actually don't know whether it has really to do with BiDi, as the characters render as expected from right to left. But the problem is that they are separate.
I'm about to translate glob2 into Persian, and as you probably know, Persian uses Arabic alphabet; which its letters, unlike Hebrew (which is also right-to-left), sometimes (most of the times) stick together and form a unified shape. For example, the Persian translation for "Defense Tower" would be "برج مراقبت", but right now it will show up as "ب ر ج م ر ا ق ب ت" i.e. characters are not merged.
I'm a little frustrated by this problem. Because until it get solved, the Persian (and Arabic) translation would be useless.

I have the latest beta (0.9.4.1). I had this problem in 0.9.3 and 0.8.21 which I had before, and had installed both of them from my Debian repository. But I have compiled the new version myself (having libfribidi-dev (and lib-fribidi) installed) and the problem still resists.

Is it a bug? or something wrong in my system? because I searched for the problem and it seems that it have happened to no one else than me!
I even saw the Arabic translation contributor's weblog (http://the-very-end.blogspot.com/2007/0 ... rabic.html) and the letters in the screenshots were rendered correctly! He says one needs "to get latest fribidi from CVS in order to find arabic character shaped correctly". as the post dates back to June 2007, I don't think I still need to get the fribidi from CVS when the fribidi installed in my system is probably newer than the one in CVS in 2007 (which WORKED!). ...or do I need to do so?! Is it even fribidsi's fault?! My fribidi version is 0.10.9-1 (the one in Debian Lenny)

Thanks in advance.

[Zenfur]

Hm, I tried this translation to see if it's only your computer's problem, and I see that it's not (I don't speak that language but I see what you said). I cannot help in other way. (because I don't know how )

[etieffen]

thx zenfur so apparently it's not my system's problem! anyway, i will continue to translate and once they are complete (Persian and Esperanto translation), i will post them (where should i post?! )
now the game basic elements (i.e names of units, buildings, areas, flags, etc.) and menus and buttons (except for the YOG part) are almost complete in both languages. messages still remain.
and I hope the problem about Persian go away at last (developers?! please!)

[Kobuta]

you are great!!!

hope Giszmo or someone who knows can help with that!!!

[Zenfur]

Hm, actually Giszmo is the only dev who reads forum
@Kobuta: you have the answer to "what language do you translate to" (or something like that) in Maps by Zenfur topic
(btw some new 1v1 maps will be done soon, as well I will make 3 players maps, because I see that we don't have many )
Kobuta, one more, use edit option

[Giszmo]

hi etieffen

i will post your original post on the mailing list. maybe somebody who has introduced bidi can fix it. thanx for translating and reporting the bug.
your translation would best go to the ml, too. if you post it here, it will certainly not be lost neither but as zenfur said, the devs notice mails on the ml within minutes but posts here maybe not at all.

regards,

giszmo

[Giszmo]

https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?26420 is a better place than the ml although the bt is again not being as actively watched as the ml.

[etieffen]

Thanks everyone!
And sorry I didn't check the forums. I thought there wouldn't be further responses.
OK Giszmo i will post them on the ml. I'm not on my own PC now (and for some days, won't be) so I'll post them as soon as I get home. Thanks for the guidance, also for reporting to the BT.

About the problem, I have read the mailing lists and discussions between the contributor of the Arabic translation and developers here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/glob2 ... 00083.html and here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/glob2 ... 00003.html. I concluded the problem was with the version of fribidi. the working version was long in the CVS and has just recently been released as 0.19.2 (in March 2009). [http://fribidi.org/] It will be on Fedora 11 and apparently on the next version of Debian (Squeeze). [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=462612].
I thought the problem would go away if the game was compiled with the new version. (sorry for I just "thought"! I SHOULD have compiled it with the new fribidi myself and tested whether it works or not! (and have reported it!) but unfortunately I can't. because I have no fast connection (still using dialup!!) and in order to compile the new fribidi I suppose I should download a lot of -dev packages (and perhaps compile them too), and again because I'm not so familiar with compilig serious programs. I have just compiled games and trivial programs so far (with little success!) so excuse me for this!)

By the way, Zenfur, i see a new "ت" (Te) in your signature