Hello guys,

I use Mozilla Web browser to see Arabic sites like
(www.aljazeera.net). But some sites are not displayed at all. So
Mozilla has support for Arabic but it's not 100%.

Now KDE 3.0 has support for Arabic. I just enabled it today,
June 27. Here are the steps to enable Arabic in KDE 3.0 :

First: Get Arabic Fonts
=======================

Download some true type fonts from this URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm

times new roman, arial and courier new support arabic.
These are self extracting cab files. If you don't have
windows, you can use "cabextract" under linux:

http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php3

After you download the file:

tar zxvf cabextract-0.5.tar.gz
cd cabextract-0.5
./configure
make
make install (you have to be root for this)

Then type:

cabextract courie32.exe
cabextract arial32.exe
cabextract times32.exe

to extract the configuration files for each font.

Copy the all the fonts that have been extracted to a new
directory, then use 'ttmkfdir' command inside the new directory
to generate a "fonts.dir" and ""fonts.scale" files. Just type
the command by itself.

If it doesn't create entries for iso10646-1 encoding, add them
manually, and augment the number of entries at the top of
"fonts.dir" and "fonts.scale" .

Add an entry to your xfs configuration file

/etc/X11/fs/config:

catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/some/other/dirs,
.................
/your/truetype/fonts/dir


Restart your xfs font server:

/etc/init.d/xfs restart

Create a ".fonts.conf" file for Xft. Here's mine:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype</dir>
</fontconfig>

Substitute the dir element with the path where you installed the
fonts.

Under Control Center->Look & Feel, choose Times New Roman for
all fonts. You will find the button on the middle of the screen.


Second: Enalbe Arabic support
=============================

Download the pavkage for Arabic support for KDE from:

http://i18n.kde.org/teams/index.php?action=info&team=ar

the package name is kde-i18n-ar.tar.bz2

You must install the files at the /usr directory by typing the
follwoing:( you will have to be root)

tar xjf kde-i18n-ar.tar.bz2
cd kde-i18n-ar
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install

Restart your kde3 session and you'll find Arabic under
the language menu under personalization in the Control Center.

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To type in Arabic, go to Contorl Center->Perpherals->Keyboard
and add Arabic Keyboard support.

After that, you can switch from English to Arabic keyboard by
right clikcing on the small icon of the US flag in the panel.

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Peace out.

Faisal

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