[Wylug-help] Urdu Support

[Thomas Porteus]

Thanks everyone for the help. its all set up and working now.

Thanks again
Tom
On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 15:21 +0000, Aaron Crane wrote:
> david powell writes:
> > On Saturday 14 January 2006 11:21 pm, Thomas Porteus wrote:
> > > have just started learning Urdu at school and want to be able to
> > > type it on linux. Ive had a google but nothing jumps out. Im using
> > > Ubuntu 5.10 and ive installed all the correct fonts (i think).
> 
> This might help:
> 
>   http://www.urduweb.org/wiki/UbuntuLinux
> 
> > if i recall correctly urdu is written back to front form the way
> > english is written or is that just chinese and arabic ?
> 
> The Urdu script is ultimately based on the Arabic script (via the
> Persian script), so, yes, it's written right-to-left.
> 
> Chinese was traditionally written vertically rather than horizontally,
> with the columns arranged right-to-left (top-right first, then
> top-to-bottom).  Most modern usage writes Chinese top-left first then
> left-to-right, same as the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Devanagari
> scripts.  Japanese and Korean are like Chinese: traditionally top-right
> then top-to-bottom, but nowadays usually top-left then left-to-right.
> 
> Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic scripts are top-right first, then
> right-to-left.
> 
> Mongolian and Phags-Pa are top-left first, then top-to-bottom.
> 
> Bottom-to-top scripts seem extremely rare; apparently the ancient Berber
> script is one example.
> 
> A number of ancient languages (notably early Semitic ones including
> Phoenician, as well as Hungarian runes) were typically written
> boustrophedon: alternating lines of left-to-right and right-to-left,
> like inkjet printers.  Many of the boustrophedon scripts also reversed
> the shape of the letters on alternate lines.  The term "boustrophedon"
> comes from Greek for "as the ox turns"; it's the same way an ox would
> pull a plough through a field.  Many early Greek inscriptions are
> boustrophedon.
>