[reportlab-users] RTL Patch Committed

[Andy Robinson]

2009/11/22 Hosam Aly <haly at centrivision.com>:

> As for installing PyFribidi2, here are the steps to do it on Ubuntu 9.04:


It works for me!  At least it looks like proper joined-up Arabic, not
separate characters like last time.  Congratulations!

Now, excuse me for thinking like a manager for a moment; that's my job
these days.  I want to think through the steps to get this
"productionised".  ReportLab have the resources to do a lot of this,
luckily.  Here's what I can see...

1. create precompiled pyfribidi libraries for Windows and add to our
DLL collections
2. make sure compiling works roughly the same on Mac, and/or make some
instructions or a library available
3. persuade pyfribidi maintainer to update code to use latest fribidi
(thus making the 'sed' line?
4. get Ubuntu to update their pyfribidi package

(in essence, we're adding one more 'optional C dependency' and we want
to make sure anyone who needs it can get hold of it without compiler
knowledge).


5. document what fonts people need on the various platforms to get
something working
6. ensure there are no hard-coded font paths and anything configurable
comes from rl_config
7. merge as soon as we know it doesn't break anything, and also runs
when pyfribidi2 is not present.

8. think about the other contexts where we output text.  This works
within paragraphs; but what happens if one simply used drawString
(e.g. to draw a chapter title at the top of a page), or has a legend
in a chart?   I'll come back to this in another message.

9. collect tests in Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi and any other widely used
languages which can use this, along with font instructions

10. create a web page and manual section which explains it all,
preferably so a developer someone who doesn't know much about RTL can
use these features, with some screenshots of how it's supposed to
look.

As I said ReportLab can do a lot of this.

Am I missing anything?

- Andy