Free Software In Iran, KDE In Farsi

Elektroschock writes "KDE, the leading *nix desktop environment, is translated to Farsi (=Persian). Now native language KDE can be used in Iran as well. Farsi is written from left to right. Full story at Dot KDE. Arash Zeini (KDE Farsi) wrote an intresting article about FLOSS in Iran. His view: "It is not a secret anymore that FLOSS is gaining momentum all over the world. We witness an international move and acceptance of FLOSS in the private as well as in the public sector."" Update: 12/29 16:37 GMT by T : That should read "Farsi is written from right to left." (Thanks to Thomas Zander for pointing that out.)

Comments

Correction

[MntlChaos]

Farsi is written RIGHT to LEFT. not the other way around. fix please

Re:Correction

[Alsee]

Maybe "left to right" was meant to be read from right to left, in which case the story is correct. :D

-

KDE propaganda

[glassesmonkey]

Now that the war in Iraq and Afganistan have died down... I see the KDE/Gnome wars are finally getting the front page /. attention they so deserve. Am I the only one who read the summary and thought the description "the leading desktop environment" seemed to be included just to stir up trouble?

Disclaimer: I prefer KDE but really like Gnome config menus

bass-ackwards!

[seanadams.com]

Farsi is written from left to right.

!si ti egaugnul yzarc a tahw dna

what is FLOSS

[bhny]

http://www.flora.ca/floss.shtml

Farsi is Right to Left

[Stephen Samuel]

From the website:

Farsi, like most middle-east languages, appears to be written right-to-left -- the same as our numbers are -- When the original algebra texts from Persia were translated, the translator kept the right to Left form of the numbers (little-endian). This is the reason for the big-endian / little-endian dicotomy in modern day computers -- we've been writing our numbers backwards for the last thousand years!

Re:Farsi is Right to Left

[1u3hr]

When the original algebra texts from Persia were translated, the translator kept the right to Left form of the numbers (little-endian).

Maybe so, but Roman numbers are also little-endian, and so are Chinese and Thai. I don't think it has anything to do with the way words are written, when speaking we say "one thousand five hundred and twenty one", and write the figures down in the same order -- it's natural to give the most important, biggest, part first.

So actually Arabic scripts are the exception, as not the origin, if you look at the sequence of writing.

Re:Farsi is Right to Left

[jez9999]

Our numbers are written backwards? The mantissa is *right-justified*, but I see nothing backwards about the way we write numbers.

How to make a system bilingual?

[GerardM]

I would like to know how to use two languages on one system so that I have a Farsi environment or an English environment at will.

I have many friends, among them Iranians, Turks and Israeli, who would like to have a bilingual system. Multiple keyboards are also an issue. Preferably it would need a switch to go from one language to the next alternatively a reboot would be acceptable.

Any ideas, resources that I might look at?

Thanks,
Gerard

Re:How to make a system bilingual?

[jrumney]

Windows does nothing of the sort.

Windows 98 requires dual boot for different languages, as different languages require a different install of Windows. Windows 2000 and XP can have different locales per user, which works for most third party software, but you are still stuck with one interface language for Windows itself unless you dual boot it.

Most X based systems will allow you to set the interface language from the login screen.

Re:Wrong-o

[Moridineas]

Don't mean to be a pedant--but Farsi is actually an Indo-European language--meaning it's related to Latin, German, Spanish, etc (and Hindi!). You can see this in some cognate words--mother in Farsi is madar, father is pedar, brother baradar, etc.

Arabic is a semitic language, related to Hebrew. In Arabic these words are very different. (My Arabic is weak but mother can be "umm," father "ab" .. very different).

Both languages do use the same basic script--the Arabic script, though Farsi does have several additional letters.

Heading trolls off at the pass.

[theolein]

I can well imagine that, as with any article on /. relating to anything not understood/foreign/not american there will be a fairly high noise to signal ratio around here. So, I thought I could mention that Farsi (written from right to left in a modifed Arabic script) is an Indoeuropean language with no relation whatsover to Arabic, apart from the script (The Alphabet for those who think that script means VBS or Perl) and loan words.

Iran, with its odd mix of religious and democratic government (The religious side seems to be making it very hard for the elected officials to do anything), also has an interesting approach to copyright. According to Islamic law If I understand it correctly(), God is the source of all invention and creation and therefore the holder of all copyright. That means that things like MS anti-piracy drives are unknown there, as practically everything is pirated.

While it certainly is an interesting way of looking at things, I can see countries like the US (surprise, they don't get on well with the Iranians) making it very difficult for the Iranians ever getting into the WTO because so called IP has no value there (Read: Britney will not make much cash on CD sales in Teheran and the Matrix 2&3 will flop just as it did in the west, but for other reasons).

Re:Heading trolls off at the pass.

[pirhana]

>> Considering then that Islam is the dominant religion *only* in countries that are behind the rest technologically, in spite of the fact that they are also the "cradle of civilization", and have therefore been populated longer than any western country, does that indicate that keeping knowledge hidden is actually condusive to building civilization?

No, not at all IMO. These "islamic countries" are lagging behind in technology and education NOW. Its true. But that was not the case earlier. They had a glorious past when they were well advanced in these things. What happened later was they deviated from Islamic values and principles including(but not limited to) education and information. Now what they are following is not at all Islamic. I would say most of the Islamic countries are actually feudalistic societies. Also, the western societies didnt advance when they kept information "hidden". On the contray , they advanced when information and knowledge was essentially FREE. Now they are adopting a "hidden" approach in technology and education. Lets see where it takes them in the coming periods. IMHO, this will have a negative impact on their lead in the coming periods.

Re:Wrong-o

[belmolis]

Here's the Ethnologue entry for
Farsi and its position
in the family tree. The Ethnologue is the best
single source for reliable information about where
languages are spoken, by how many people, etc.

Free Software+WMD In Iran

[Myuu]

Well I know my saying for the next war, "No Blood For Proprietary Software"

Please say "Persian" not "Farsi"

[Johnny Pissoff]

Excuse me for being a pedant here. But the only reason the word "Farsi" has become current in English is because back in 50's, 60's, 70's neither the f_____g State Department nor the CIA knew that we had a perfectly good and venerable word in English for the language, i.e. "Persian." Listen, to anyone who knows the language (own horn tooting here) it sounds silly. It's completely mispronounced as it's employed in English, the accented syllable for one is just wrong. We don't say, "Do you speak francais?" (imagine it said with American accent, butcher the vowels, heavily glide the last syllable, clearly pronounce the "n"), and the same with any other language. Why? Because we already have perfectly good words for these languages in English. Calling it "Farsi" only highlights Western ignorance and it's exoticisation of the Eastern/Muslim/Oriental other. So why use it? Az kasi ke nedane va nedane ke nedane.... or words to that effect (if memory serves)

Re:Please say "Persian" not "Farsi"

[oroshana]

I am Iranian and I speak Farsi. This is actually a hot debate, even within Iran!!! What do we call our language? Well, the main problem with "Persian" is that it harkens back to the days of "Persia" and this is not politically good. When one says anything like Pers-blah it brings to mind the western rule/view of Fars/Pars/Persia/Iran/Aria. Look, the land of today's Iran has been ruled by a wide range of people. It is not a land of set constants. Just like when the country decided to change it's international name from Persia to Iran, the name of the language must also adapt. Both Persian and Farsi are fine! If you say either people will know what you are talking about. The problem with Persia/Persian is that it is a greco-nized version of the ancient name of the persian empire: It sounds somewhere in between Pars and Fars. Depending on what dialect is being spoken it can be pronouced eitherway. For example: one of the current provinced of Iran is "Fars". This is the cultural-center of what used to be the old persian empire. I know this all sounds weird, but really, the only iranians that don't like the word "Farsi" are the really uptight ones that want the monarchy re-established in Iran.. They usually also want the name of the country to be changed back to Persia. But those are very extreme people. Most people don't give a crap.

Re:No copyrights?

[openmtl]

Why do they have to sign some International Copyright Agreement ?

Its domestic law that counts as it sets the obligations of the people in that country. As far as I can see (IANAL) they have fairly standard copyright laws except that the time period is shorter than e.g. US or EU copyright law.

Unesco copyright summary for Iran

Obviously certain corporates would have an issue with the lack of extended copyright as the US has but the intent of copyright was always to help the authors in their own lifetime not maintaining the monopoly of corporate copyright holders. I'll probably be modded down as flamebait by some paid-for corporate astroturfer now !

Re:Iran under sanctions?

[einhverfr]

The sanctions in question date back to the crisis in 1980. They are, to my knowledge, a US-only affair, but hey, in the words of W, "You'r either with us or against us."

The point is that FOSS contributions ignore national boundaries, and this is not illegal. Currently if I (a US citizen) sell the rights to a book I wrote to a Dutch company, they are not bound by US export law and can sell that book in Cuba and Iran... However, I cannot sell the rights to a Cuban company.

Arabic seems like a more useful target

[ajs]

Ports to languages like Farsi are interesting, but maintainers of applications really need to focus on Arabic, Hindi, whatever the primary Chinese used for computers is, Spanish and English. If your application ships with these languages, you cover your bases VERY nicely. Let localized distributions help you out on the smaller languages (*cough*klingon*cough*).

Don't get me wrong, I applaud these people for their work, but package maintainers can easily get caught up in a sort of fad around certain translations, and sometimes that hurts if the biggest languages are not covered well.

On another front, Gnome also supports right-to-left languages, so don't feel you have to chose KDE... choose whichever supports your needs best from an application standpoint.