Add Arabic & Persian support to the terminal

#1 April 10, 2010

Terminal by default don't support Arabic well so we need to do some modification to allow it to work properly:

1- Install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install libfribidi0 libfribidi-dev

3- Open[COLOR=Red] /usr/share/applications/gnome-terminal.desktop[COLOR=Black] by any editor you like:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/gnome-terminal.desktop

Terminal=true
Exec=/usr/bin/bicon.bin

6- That's all.

Now you can work well with Arabic & Persian in the terminal. You can create files, folders in both languages in a proper manner & you can can see file & folders names correctly.

Finally: This also added Arabic & Persian support to xterm & PuTTY. [/COLOR][/COLOR]

#2 April 12, 2010

salam,

thank you zero-n, great job:)!

#3 April 25, 2010

Thanks zero-n, This is magnificent, fabulous, 3ageeeb .... you are the one=D>=D>=D>

only missing the amd-64 bit which is: https://launchpad.net/~behnam/+archive/ppa/+build/574789/+files/bicon_0.2.0-1ubuntu0~ppa4_amd64.deb this goes instead of step 2 where you download and install bicon package

#4 April 26, 2010

thanks for adding the link of amd-64-bit package.

#5 October 17, 2010

hello zero-n,

I'm followed your steps but still can't see any Arabic or [COLOR=Red][COLOR=Black]Persian fonts in terminal.

is your solution worked with Ubuntu 10.10 ??

thanks [/COLOR][/COLOR]

#6 October 18, 2010

Hello q8istud,

I am using 10.04 LTS but i have 10.10 CD i will this guide there & give you a feed back

#7 December 6, 2010

hohooh! super thanks bro! I was just going to install mlterm before I landed on your thread. Working like a charm! Cheers!

#8 December 21, 2010

will this support RTL and connect the characters? 'cause i tried that and it doesn't do it, or is there anything i'm missing

p.s. if it does...good work

#9 January 8, 2011

[SIZE=3]I have followed your instructions and Arabic text worked fine until I noticed that my console started doing this[/SIZE]

[IMG]http://www.about-gnulinux.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/ArabConsoleBug.png[/IMG]

[SIZE=3]As you can notice, when the string grows longer of your input on the terminal it starts with a carriage return on the same line rather than prompting for your input on the next one!

Any idea of the cause? Any missing "new line" command here or there? Thank you again. [/SIZE]

#10 January 9, 2011

Hi GNULinuxUser,

i've faced this problem before but honestly i didn't try to solve it.

i you find out a soultion share it with me ;)

#11 January 9, 2011

zero-n said: Hi GNULinuxUser,

i've faced this problem before but honestly i didn't try to solve it.

i you find out a soultion share it with me ;) I definitely will brief you with any new updates on the topic as soon as I thoroughly look into it when I get some time. Thank you so much for your reply.

#12 January 10, 2011

I am yet interested to know if you pursued using your command line with these new modifications? Because I find it not convenient at all for my use!

Or did you simply uninstall the packages and it worked back again in its original setting ?

#13 January 11, 2011

no i have done Ubuntu 10.10 fresh installation on that computer to try the new Ubuntu release.

#14 March 15, 2012

Thanks man!

(but if I type CTRL-ALT-T in gnome-> letters are separated, or CTRL-ALT-F1 and login it does not work --> squares appears!)

#15 May 16, 2012

Thank you for your wonderful work!

I found a minor problem with a java application using jline as an input console. When you press a backspace (independently from which keyboard you are using, Arabic or otherwise) a division by zero error occurs:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero at jline.ConsoleReader.backspace(ConsoleReader.java:1414) at jline.ConsoleReader.backspace(ConsoleReader.java:1436) at jline.ConsoleReader.readLine(ConsoleReader.java:628) at jline.ConsoleReader.readLine(ConsoleReader.java:457)termi at opennlp.ccg.util.JLineReader.readLine(JLineReader.java:80) at opennlp.ccg.TextCCG.main(TextCCG.java:174)

In normal terminal usages, this does not happen. Nor it happen with jline if you comment out the two lines added in the terminal configuration file in order to enable bicon support.

Thank you,

Giuliano

#16 May 30, 2012

Salutation Akhy , Nice work and i salute you. :)

but i must conform this did not work for me.

I use irssi on a screen session in gnome-termianl , the characters is set to UTF-8 i have tried severel fonst incloding GNU Unifont , makes no differance , still the Arabic letters are shown as left-aligned . left-to-right

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vte/+bug/263822

Salutation .

#17 June 1, 2012

Sary.sa said: Salutation Akhy , Nice work and i salute you. :)