I'am trying to create a bilingual and bi-directional (Arabic and English
Qur'an)e-Book, that will be compliant with the Open eBook OEB specification.
This is targeted at the PalmOS, but should be renderable in XML and/or
XHTML compliant browsers such IE 5.0 and Netscape 6.0 or any type of Open
eBook reader.
I already have the HTML files entire of the Qur'an in Arabic and English -
though I will have them proof read many times before I distribute the
completed eBook.
The Arabic pages are coded using the win-1256 (Arabic) codepage in the
following manner:
<HTML DIR=RTL>
<head>
<META content="text/html; charset=windows-1256" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<body>
<p align="right">
<font face = "Traditional Arabic">
<font size = "5pt">
These pages show up fine (correct font and directionality) when using the IE
5.0 browser, however when I convert them to the PalmOS, the right to left
directionality is lost.
In order to convert the HTML pages to the OEB eBook format I'm using the
MobiPocket Publisher (home page
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/HomePage/default.asp)that creates a prc file
from the HTML files.
In order to test the conversion to the PalmOS, I'm using the PalmOS Emulator
(running a 3.5 Palm OS IIIc rom) with the APOS 2.0 (home page
http://www.arabicpalm.com/) and Mobipocket Reader software installed.
The above setup is being tested on Windows 98 (Arabic Enabled Edition) and
Windows 2000 PCs.
The prc files created using this method, display the Arabic font on the the
emulator's Palm IIIc screen (when using the MobiPocket reader), however the
correct direction is not enforced.
Please note that Arabic and English text are coded with separate html files.
My questions are as follows....
How can I convert from cp 1256 to unicode, without doing it character by
character? Is there software that will do this?
Dose the eBook Spec. allow for the nesting of a right to left languages
(Arabic) inside of a left to right language (English) on the same page?
Does anyone know if APOS is unicode compliant?
Any advise or examples would be greatly appreciated, as I have not found any
examples on how nest languages (with different text and directionality) with
in the Palm doc nor prc formats.
Akil
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