On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:31:07 -0600, Graham Douglas
Hello Idris A chapter or appendix on the fundamentals of Unicode
We plan a special topic for unicode and opentype processing. Since this is mkiv only, all input will be utf-8 etc.
A (big...) chapter on typesetting Arabic would be great --- I've been self-teaching/studying Arabic for a couple of years, time permitting. I hope one day to use ConTeXt to write-up my study notes --- especially the formal grammar which is (need I say) vast!
I have written a few chapters for a supplementary monograph on scholarly typesetting, with a focus on Arabic-script typography. There will definitely be discussions of bidi and other language issues in TE though. Indeed, my intention is for the book to be bidi-neutral, so all structural elements are to be defined abstractly. This effort itself will lead to improvements in mkiv's bidi model.
It would be great to be able to document tools whereby you could mark-up any Arabic word (noun, adjective verb etc) to show certain parts in colour or add overbraces/underbraces etc. Colouring the glyphs or other ways of annotating the Arabic text to help your own documenting and understanding of the rules. I'm sure you know what I mean!!
News flash: it's already there! See attached.
Of course, it would be impractical to cover all possibilities but the core task of accessing the node lists (and (maybe) by attributes) to introduce special effects onto the Arabic glyphs. Tools to access the vowelling --- e.g., colour the vowels or add boxes around them etc --- purely for the purposes of aiding understanding/memory etc.
We will have a Special Topics section for some advanced things like this. The focus will be the high-level interface that Context already provides -- including for things you have described above. But we want to provide the foundation for readers who want to dig into the internals and do advanced typographic programming as well.
Anything that could help students/learners of Arabic to write really well typeset notes, with the Arabic text "annotated" to highlight things that you want to really stress.
Sure, good idea -- can be abstracted to include other langs as well.
Especially if it is some tricky point of grammar and you want to really make sure you write a careful account of your hard-earned understanding so you don't forget next time!!!
I taught a 2-semester course on Quranic Arabic last year, and I still want to author a modern approach to the topic of Quranic grammar. Maybe we can discuss that -- yet another book project! Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shi`i Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523
