Dear Vafa,
Salaam
On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 04:03:03 -0700, وفا خلیقی، Vafa Khalighi
TeX-e-Parsi is better than omega because it was written a long time ago (15 years ago) and since then, the developer (Yazdipur) has modified and corrected the code.
Hmm, not sure if this is completely correct: See below. I'm just curious: Did Yazdipur try to communicate with the Omega developers and offer patches etc? Another question: TeX-e-Parsi was originally closed source, I think: What is the status of the source code?
So firstly I think it does not have any bugs or if it has, it has a very small number of bugs comparing to Omega.
I think the same is true of luatex in this regard.
Secondly TeX-e-Parsi have been used by the Iranians for the whole period and still people continue to use it and they are very happy with it since it is not buggy at all.
Have you tested the bidi in luatex and compared it with that of TeX-e-Parsi? It is already much better than etex's. According to Behdad Esfahbod and Roozbeh Pournader, http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb23-1/farsitex.pdf TeX-e-Parsi has not been developed since 1996. I know that there has been development of Omega since then, including a new bidi model -- with new primitives -- that replaced the one in pre-1996 Omega. Looking at the primitive list you provided, I don't think TeX-e-Parsi builds on the later, improved Omega model. A better approach might be to 1. Make an exhaustive test suite that compares bidi behavior in luatex with that of TeX-e-Parsi. You don't need to use any arabic-script, just latin modern samples; 2. Identify the diffferences between the two and determine which -- if either -- has the saner behavior for each case; 3. Make specific feature/debugging requests and -- if possible -- point to areas where TeX-e-Parsi code may be useful in implementing the features you want. I did such a suite when we were testing bidi a couple of years back -- comparing aleph with luatex and looking for bugs. IIRC the remaining area where luatex needs work is in its handling of verbatim, but I need to go back to my test files and check.
I believe TeX-e-Parsi is much more advanced than Omega and it defines a set of new primitives to support LTR and RTL typesetting fully in addition to changing some of TeX codes.
As I mentioned above, I think the last Omega primitives are newer than TeX-e-Parsi's. But a related issue: Are those primitives based on the unicode bidi algorithm? There is also an ongoing implementation of the algorithm in the MKIV inteface to luatex. Again, the best thing may be to identify missing features and bugs, then the developers can identify the best approach to implementing/fixing things. That may or may not involve using TeX-e-Parsi code. سلام Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shi`i Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523