Hi all! I'm planning on making an Arabic translation pack for LFS to get more of the Arab world involved with LFS . So, is there any chance of Arabic character support being used for the next patch?
Seeing that he lists his location as "Cairo / Egypt", the chances he is actually able to speak Arabic despite having an Ireland flag aren't that bad, no?
Hi. Arabic is quite a difficult one to support because the text needs to go in the reverse direction, so it's not just a case of adding the Arabic alphabet. A lot needs to be done with the text formatting and the way the characters are drawn on the screen. I haven't researched how the input method works and how you combine Latin text and Arabic text in one string, and how the direction of the text changes in one ascii string... it sounds quite confusing. Anyway, I'm interested in it but I really can't estimate when we can support Arabic.
I don't know if it's easier or harder than Chinese / Japanese / Korean which I'd like to support as well but that has different problems, although it goes left to right in computer games, using thousands of multi-byte characters does present some different challenges. I'm interested in that as well...
Thanks for the reply Scawen . I understand that Arabic is a bit complex in the way that it goes from right to left. Take your time with it . I was just making a suggestion .
@Duke and Harjun: I'm actually a hybrid . Yes, half alien/half human . Nah, obviously joking , I'm actually half Irish/half Egyptian which would make me Irigyptian and would explain why I use the Irish flag for my country and use Egypt as my location . Perhaps you could add multi-flag support for users on LFS forums Scawen?
@Harjun again : It would seem pretty stupid of me to make a thread stating that I'm planning on making an Arabic language pack if I didn't know how to use it. Thats like the Queen writing up some German, WHOOPS! I forgot, she IS German .
My wife's Persian and her native language is Farsi, which is distinct from Arabic, although it is written in Arabic characters (by and large - there's a unique 'p' to Farsi that's not in Arabic, and many extra characters in Arabic that aren't used in Farsi). I spent several months building a weblog for her that is entirely in Farsi, so I had to learn a ton about right-to-left languages, which Scawen is referencing here. Curiously, web browsers are pretty good at supporting complex languages.
In terms of the basic characters themselves, it doesn't seem so terrible on an initial assessment as there are 'only' 32 characters - Arabic as a language has even more. However the gotcha is that the shape of the letter depends on where it is in the word - is it the first character, the last, or in the middle? Think of how we capitalise the first letter of certain words (names, first word of the sentence) - it's roughly the same principle, except instead of "is it a capital letter or not" there are four positions to worry about.
And of course Arabic users have their own keyboard input layout as well. I built a phonetic one for us to use at home, so that the character 'alef' which is a long 'a' sound is mapped to the A key on the keyboard. This works great for us at home, but of course a native Arabic speaker would most certainly expect to use their conventional keyboard layout. For Farsi, it's called ISIRI 2901, with the actual key layout shown. But thinking about this, I'm sure Scawen has cracked this already e.g. for our European friends using native keyboard inputs etc.
Anyway, if Arabic characters ever make it to LFS I can start writing my racer name correctly, and hopefully people will stop confusing me with 'Rakesh' and assuming I'm Indian - when in actual fact I'm about as Persian or Indian as Scawen is.
I'm a Flash developer and trying to make a multi-lingual Flash application. I expected a large company like Macromedia/Adobe should have thought of Arabic characters but unfortunately the seem to forgot although Chinese and Japanese is supported
With Flash 9/CS3 there seems no difference in this matter... why are software developers forgetting the Arabic speaking people?
I'm solving my problem by adding pictures with Arabic texts instead of dynamic textfields; heavy but no workaround
I'm not trying to apply any pressure. Scawen, would there be any chance in the near future for support for Arabic characters? I'm just interested to know if you could give me an estimate of when it'll happen
it is really nice suggestion guys came from my country's son Leprekaun and I am ready to translate the home pages of lfs in Arabic to gain more ppl from the Arab world, I am really doing my best effort to make an Egyptian team here, so that I created a group on face book called LFS EGYPT and now we have 15 members including me and Leprekaun, more will come about the Egyptian team soon in an independent thread.
A-z-k and Ihab - I think the problem is that Scawen would need to not only add the Arabic alphabet (not sure how hard it would be to code, quite possibly rather time consuming) and support for right to left (probably a lot of coding).
I personally would like to see as many languages added in LFS, I wouldn't have a use for Arabic or any RTL language myself but It's useful for some people
Sorry for my lack of knowledge, but is it necessary to have both left-to-right and right-to left in order to write Arabic? Does anyone write it in one direction only?
I ask this because Chinese can be understood left-to-right, right-to-left or up-to-down. But we use more left-to-right than any direction these days, probably to make it work better with numbers and English.
indeed, if you can read english in reverse... which means:
Why the hell its right to left? Why dont make the same for latin-based languages?...or reverse nights & days since we're at it?
Btw my dad teach arabic (his 1st language). Dunno if this could help, but I just let you know.
I am an Arab I do not know too many English language
Parties wishing to put Arabic language game
These forces will Vakm joy of the Arabs.
I can help you if you want it
I'm programmer and I'm not a professional.
If you want to call on: ts.7 @ hotmail.com
I am an Arab from Saudi Arabia
My name game: MsHaKs
LFS cant support arbic. the same story with hebrew , i wanted to make a language package for israeli drivers but they said that LFS dont support hebrew/arbic because you write it from right to left and not from left to right.
Thank you for your offers of help translating, guys from Saudi Arabia.
I just thought I'd reply as it's been a long time since I wrote on this thread.
Anyway Arabic in LFS is not forgotten - I'm interested in supporting the right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew, after studying them at some point but I think it will still be a long time before these become a priority... as you know the Scirocco is the main priority at the moment then I think this year's focus will be physics, content and other things at the core of LFS which are important for all LFS racers.
. So, is there any chance of Arabic character support being used for the next patch?
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. Yes, half alien/half human 
and I am ready to translate the home pages of lfs in Arabic to gain more ppl from the Arab world, I am really doing my best effort to make an Egyptian team here, so that I created a group on face book called LFS EGYPT and now we have 15 members including me and Leprekaun, more will come about the Egyptian team soon in an independent thread.
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