From tzafrir@technion.ac.il Fri Jun  8 15:17:14 2001
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 23:07:49 +0300 (IDT)
From: Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir@technion.ac.il>
To: Haifa Linux Club list <lin-club@vipe.technion.ac.il>
Subject: Project suggestion: r2l

Hi all

In the end of today's meeting Muli has suggested that we start working on
some projects.

Well, here is a suggestion for a small project:

biditext is a strange "library" that is LD_PRELOADed by users and replaces
a couple of functions of X which draw strings to the display, The result
is that almost any X program to which it is applied gets some sort of bidi
((bidirectional hebrew) support without the need to recompile or anything.

See http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/cache/129.html

One problem of biditext is that you would sometimes like to disable the
hebrew flipping. but the biditext.so "library" has very limited ways of
communicating with the world. The way Matan has chosen to do that is that
whenever it needs to display a string it fstat()'s a spesific file, and
will flip the string only if the file exists. 

By default the file is $HOME/.rev , but it can be changed by setting the
environment variable BIDITEXT_FILENAME before running biditext.

Matan wrote a simple gui to control this flag file (.rev). It displays a
square on the screen, and:
- on right mouse click:  sets     hebrew flipping (creates the file)
- on left mouse click:   disables hebrew flipping (deletes the file)
- on middle mouse click: toggles  hebrew flipping
- on pressing q: quits
Its color also reflects the "status".

However, I feel it couuld be improved.

I have two different things in mind:

1. small and simple program, with small memory footprint

2. A nice program, with bells and whistles


Minimal requirements:
""""""""""""""""""""
- allow setting/removing and/or toggling of flipping
- show current status
- flag file name must be configurable at startup 

It would be nice to have something as a windowmaker dock applet (which is
supported by AfterStep, BlackBox and some other window managers as well).
I don't have a link for a dock apps tutorial. All I have is:
http://windowmaker.org/
http://www.bensinclair.com/dockapp/

If someone wants to write an enlightenment Epplet, it would also be nice.


A nicer program:
"""""""""""""""
- All of the above requirements (except memmmory footprint)
- maybe having configurable apperance
- dockable in kde and/or gnome
- configure appearance at run time (?)
- configure the flag file name at run time (?)
- configurable polling of the flag file (in case of manual
  deletition/creation) (?)

And one extra totally useless, and yet interesting feature:

biditext.so sets BIDITEXT_FILE to the name of the flag file it will
fstat(). Maybe trying going over all the proceeses in /proc and listing
all the current "active" flag files?

Any takers?

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir

