Free Software In Iran, KDE In Farsi 510
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.)
Correction (Score:5, Informative)
what is FLOSS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:good... (Score:1, Informative)
Actually the persians are indoeuropeans not semites, which means theye're ethnicly closer to us then say finns or hungarians.
farsi in kde (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wrong-o (Score:5, Informative)
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"
Both languages do use the same basic script--the Arabic script, though Farsi does have several additional letters.
Re:Farsi is Right to Left (Score:4, Informative)
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:Wrong-o (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the Ethnologue [ethnologue.com] entry for [ethnologue.com]
Farsi and its position [ethnologue.com]
in the family tree. The Ethnologue is the best
single source for reliable information about where
languages are spoken, by how many people, etc.
Re:How to make a system bilingual? (Score:1, Informative)
- install all languages you need
- boot up computer, using graphical login to log in to X (again I use Gnome, I expect similar for KDE)
- select the language you want to use, and make it your personal default.
Now when I log in, I get everything in English.
When my girlfriend logs in, she gets everything in Chinese, including support for Chinese typing (XCIN).
I don't know if Gnome supports Persian or other right-to-left languages, it should work as well. No reason KDE login can't do this - as it basically just sets the locale. Gnome does the rest.
Wouter.
Re:How to make a system bilingual? (Score:4, Informative)
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:Farsi is Right to Left (Score:3, Informative)
And as far as saying the biggest figures first not all western languages are like that, eg. in German the numbers are spoken like 55="five and fifty".
But this doesn't apply when the numbers are larger than 100, because 155 = "hundred five and fifty". (German and Dutch.)
JP
Re:Farsi is Right to Left (Score:3, Informative)
Hm, most? I have no idea about Chinese and Hindi, which would be pretty important to be able to qualify that. So far it looks good for you
Portuguese: vigesima quarta ("e" should have an acute, can't get it to display)
Spanish: veiticuatro
Italian: ventiquattro
Serbocroatian: dvadeset cetiri ("c" should have a caron)
Kisuaheli: ishirini na nne
But:
German: Vierundzwanzig
Re:Heading trolls off at the pass. (Score:3, Informative)
No, according to Islam God is the absolute owner of everything and people who "own" them are persons AUTHORIZED to do transactions and spend accordingly(think of someone who has leased it or hired, but dont have to pay for the lease). The only condition is that all the transactions have to be according to Islamic principles. Making profit is perfectly legitimate as long as its not crossing the limits of Islamic rules. You can charge for any service you offer within that condition
Re:Iran under sanctions? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Farsi is Right to Left (Score:1, Informative)
Re:No copyrights? (Score:3, Informative)
By the way: Farsi is not only used by Iranian in Iran but also the native language of exiled Iranians. The second language of Iranians is usually french.
Re:A little oversensitive, perhaps? (Score:2, Informative)
That was an issue about a major figure in OSS making a decision to completely remove all traces of one of the two major desktop environments from his distribution, to the extent that not even its supporting libraries would be provided. And the article was about people not liking that.
This is a single throwaway comment in the description of an article on a completely unrelated subject.
I hope you can see why one of the above situations might be more likely to spark holy wars than the other.
Let's wait for an article on how LuserLinux (backed by some well-known figure like ESR) is not going to include Gnome or any Gnome libraries before we draw comparisons, okay?
(BTW, I use Blackbox on the few occasions I boot Linux, so I would hope you don't mistake me for a riled KDE user.)
Re:Farsi is Right to Left (Score:2, Informative)
So, the original poster was correct that and should not be used in the manner that it was, but also incorrect in asserting that it shouldn't be used at all.
The many and varied Persias of Persia (Score:2, Informative)
Hmm, I admit I don't know much history of the Middle east from about 600AD 'till the renaissance, but I seem to recall that Persia (never called Persia!) spent a lot of time fighting Rome as a nation in decline, and then Rome started to decline.
Now look what you did, you've gotten me onto one of my longwinded ramble topics.
One of the problems people have with keeping the kingdoms in this area straight is that they tend to share the same name. Iran is simply the last in a sequence of little-related governments which have occupied the same area for several thousand years.
Persia as we know it - Iran - and the ancient/classical Persia share little more than their name between the two. The area known classically as the Persian Empire stretched from roughly the Indus River into the middle east, generally as far east as Iraq in Roman times, but during Greek times as far as modern Turkey and Egypt. That original Persian Empire began showing up in the mid-500s BC under Cyrus the Great, overthrowing what was left of the Babylonian kingdoms, a sequence of generally short-lived and ephemeral affairs running back almost, but not quite, into deepest antiquity.
(Even then, the ruling Achaemenid dynasty (which the kingdom was also named after) were from Media, a different region and culture within the area!)
Now, this particular Persian empire went down because of a young fellow named Alexander (y'might have heard of him) in the 330s-320s BC, and the whole region was ruled by a sort of pseudo-Greek monarchy for awhile. They were an attempt to impose a Hellenistic (NOT Hellenic, which is the democratic style most people know, but an absolute and militarist monarchy instead) veneer over the old Persian-style monarchy, and didn't do terribly much other than create a period of instability in the area for several generations as Alexander's "successors," and later their own successors, warred and plotted with one another. They were just starting to burn themselves out when the Romans came onto the scene in the west - and someone else in the east.
When people think of the particular Persian empire which tangled with Rome, they're thinking of the Arsacid monarchy, known at the time as Parthia. The Parthians hail from, well, Parthia, in the Iranian plateau, first started to chew at the Seleucid Empire's fragmented holdings around 250 BC and built up their own empire on top of the Hellenistic ones for the next century, before finally starting to tangle with the Romans in the first century BC. It was this Persian empire, the Parthians, which first started slapping the Romans around at battles such as Carrhae, Marc Antony's embarassing campaign in the east, and so on.
The Parthians soon tore themselves apart in dynastic squabbling, as well as having the major economic cities of the east torn apart in the great Roman invasions under the emperor Trajan. By 224 BC, a fellow named Ardashir came once again out of the east - in this case, if memory serves me, actually from the region of Persis/Farsis, proceeded to overthrow the Parthian empire, introduced several reforms in economics, military, and government, and became the first ruler of a very powerful, revitalized kingdom known today as the Sassanid or Sassanian Empire. This one is the Persian Empire you're thinking of, and fought a number of embarassingly successful campaigns against Rome, cumulating in the disaster of 260 when Shapur I actually captured the Emperor Valerian in battle. This empire continued along, doing very well for itself and being one of the great powers of the world, until the great Islamic wars of expansion blew out of Arabia. Pretty much nobody could stand against these guys, and the Sassanids were no exception, their last gasp being the Battle of Nehawand in 642 AD where their last great army was destroyed.
It's only by this date that an actual Islamic Persia exists, but it's still just the latest in a long string of Persias. The one now called Iran