[forwarded by Neil to scintilla-interest] My name is Idris Samawi Hamid; I'm a professor at Colorado State University, USA. The only coding I do is TeX/ConTeXt (usually at a medium to high level), but an excellent editor like Scite is just as important as if I were a developer.
The reason I am writing is to ask about the possibilities for adding bidi support to Scintilla. My research involves development of Arabic-script typesetting for TeX (particularly ConTeXt). The one thing I am sorely missing is a TeX-friendly Unicode editor with real bidi support. I am meeting with our university grants specialist this week to prepare a number of proposals to get funding so that I can pay/support someone to add Arabic/bidi support to one of the open source editors out there. Since Hans Hagen (of ConTeXt) uses Scite, and since Scite already has some (admittedly very limited) support for Arabic-script, perhaps Scintilla and Scite will be good targets for this grant proposal. I saw on a Scite list archive that you have stated that there are no present plans to add bidi support either. Questions: 1. If I were able to secure some research or other funding for a qualified developer to work on this, would you accept such a contribution back into Scintilla? 2. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions that a developer needs to meet in order to make an effective contribution that is accepted as part of the main project? 3. How much money should I apply for and what will it take to implement a bidi algorithm into Scintilla? What is the minimum it would take to make a dent into this? 4. Would it be appropriate to forward this grant possibility to the scintilla interest list? [if so, feel free to do so-)] [ elided as may be private -- Neil ] FYI: There is one and only one editor that truly supports both Arabic and bidi the way it should be done and that's SC Unipad http://www.unipad.org/main/ Basically I would like to see at least the Arabic and bidi features of unipad integrated into a Scintilla or editing solution that is TeX-friendly and cross-platform (like Scite). IMPORTANT: For this to work, an augmented Arabic unicode font will be needed. As a font developer I can provide that and help with testing etc. Right now there is only one editor-worthy Arabic font and, again, that comes with unipad. But it's a proprietary bitmap font so a free implementation will have to be done I look forward to your response. Best Idris ============================ Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 _______________________________________________ Scintilla-interest mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.lyra.org/mailman/listinfo/scintilla-interest
