Re: [docbook-apps] Persian, Arabic or Hebrew FO output, need toget writing-mode=rl-tb

[Kia Teymourian <kiat@cs.tu-berlin.de>]

Hi Bob,

thank for your answer! Actually I am working on a patch for Apache FOP so that fop
will be able to create well-formated Persian, Arabic or Hebrew output files.
My aim is to have open source documentation system for languages like Arabic
with complex text layout writing system.

On my FOP trunk version, I can create Arabic PDF files
like this one
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~kiat/fop/TestOutPut.pdf
but I should have in my FO files the correct writing system. The problem is not just having the correct shapes
and glyphs but it should be able to apply Bidi Algorithm on each paragraph.

Antenna House's XSL Formatter needs also to have writing-mode="rl-tb":

<fo:block-container
writing-mode="rl-tb"
font-family="Tahoma"
language="ar">
<fo:block>

Arabic Arabic Arabic

</fo:block>
</fo:block-container>

Can I control this by my customizing layer? Is this implemented depending on writing-mode "dir" attribute?  

Kindest regards,

Kia Teymourian

Bob Stayton wrote:

Hi Kia,

It would help if you mentioned what XSL-FO processor you are using. If it is FOP, then you are out of luck, because FOP doesn't support writing-mode properties that enable you to publish Hebrew or Arabic. 

 

If you use RenderX's XEP or Antenna House's XSL Formatter, then you can publish Hebrew and Arabic, and it is easier than you think.  The Unicode ranges for those languages identify the glyphs as needing to be set right-to-left, so the formatter will do so automatically without having to set writing-mode or use bidi-override.

 

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Kia Teymourian

To: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org

Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 3:48 AM

Subject: [docbook-apps] Persian, Arabic or Hebrew FO output, need to get writing-mode=rl-tb

Hi,
could you please tell me how can I get in my .FO output file, the attribute writing-mode="rl-tb"?
I need to have in my .FO file something like this:

<fo:block font-size="14pt"  font-family="Tahoma"  line-height="14pt" 
  space-after.optimum="12pt"   writing-mode="rl-tb" >
   &#x62a;&#x6cc;&#x645;&#x648;&#x631;&#x6cc;&#x627;&#x646;
</fo:block>

I send my XML file with dir="rtl" attribute to the XSLT processor, and the dir="rtl" is just once defined in the root tag
<book dir="rtl">  or <article dir="rtl">.
Is this feature implemented?
Or should I add this part in my customizing layer?

How can I get <fo:bidi-override> objects in my .FO output? Is bidi-override implemented?

Thanks,
Kia Teymourian