Zero-Width Non-Joiner

First release of Persian Mozilla Firefox ever!

2009-07-01T12:18:00.003+04:30

Download Persian Mozilla Firefox 3.5 now! This is the first time Firefox is released in Persian. The number of supported languages has raised to 70 this time!

I started the Mozilla Persian localization team back in 2002 and after almost 7 years, this is our first release, which is very very close to perfect! I should thank Ehsan Akhgari for his great help to the Persian team and the Mozilla project generally in the past couple of years.

Gmail Wish

2009-02-16T05:19:00.004+03:30

Wish Gears had GPG integrity so Gmail could sign and encrypt emails via the web UI...

RIRA.IRAN (ری‌را.ایران)

2009-02-09T00:20:00.004+03:30

We got a new Persian domain name (IDN) for RiRa, the free Persian digital library. It's وب.ری‌را.ایران.ir. (translation: web.rira.iran.ir ;)

UDHR in Persian

2009-02-08T23:47:00.002+03:30

Finally the Persian translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is available on the UDHR in Unicode project. (get the PDF)

This Persian (Farsi) version is an encoding of this old printed version. If you know any newer translation available in public domain please inform us.

Jalali GCal 3.0 & Greasefire

2009-02-08T22:56:00.006+03:30

Jalali GCal has a major update, version 3.0.

It's updated to recent changes by Google on the Calendars's HTML code;
now uses jQuery for some operations, which makes it somehow faster now and later updates will be easier as well;

Get the new English and Persian edition from the Google Code download page. If you cannot access Google Code, or have problems with Persian text, please try the userscripts.org mirror; English and Persian.

OTOH I found this handy Firefox/Greasemonkey extension named Greasefire, which lists all available user-scripts (from userscripts.org) for current site in just one click, and you can install them rightaway!

The exciting news is that Jalali GCal has the 6th place in the list of scripts for Google Calendar in Greasefire (actually userscripts.org)!

Jalali GCal moved to Google Code

2008-09-19T23:09:00.004+04:30

Finally I created a project for Jalali GCal in code.google.com. Here are the Installation Guide and the downloads list.

Thanks to Mehdi Ahmadizadeh, the new versions work fine with current Google Calendar UI. Also some ideas from Shayan have been implemented.

Here are latest features (for version 2.4):

The userscript is now available in two editions: English and Persian. Using Persian edition gives you Persian numbers and months' names;
The font of Persian texts in Persian version is bigger than the default texts;
The name of the Jalali month is shown in the first day of the month (in the table).

Hope you enjoy it. Feel free to report enhancement requests, bugs, and issues.

Persian in Console, using Bicon and console-setup

2008-04-25T21:02:00.008+04:30

This is a screen-shot of Persian translation of The Little Prince, in GNOME Terminal, using Bicon.

A few days ago Ahmed El-Mahmoudy told me about his recent work on Bicon, the Bidirectional Console program. He has made a Debian package, so I made one for Ubuntu Hardy, with a little fix on builddeps, through Launchpad's Private Package Archive build system. You can find the package at my PPA.

I just started using PPA and this is my first package there. By the way, I've also became a Launchpad Beta Tester and am using Launchpad as my OpenID server.

Also I found console-setup works fine with XKB's Iranian keyboard layout, with a change on CODESET. This is how you can get a Persian/Iranian keyboard on your Linux console. Open /etc/default/console-setup and change the lines like these:


CODESET="Arabic"

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us,ir"
XKBVARIANT=","
XKBOPTIONS="grp:shift_caps_toggle,lv3:ralt_switch,grp_led:scroll"

Bicon project is not so active, but if you need Persian support in console, it's a good start. Please report bugs, or inform us at #arabeyes at irc.freenode.net. Thanks.

Iranian Firefox Users Survey

2008-01-31T11:07:00.000+03:30

A couple of friends have been running a survey for Iranian users of Firefox. It contains at most 17 questions, based on whether you use Firefox, and its version.

It's open for another couple of weeks, and the results will be out soon after that. Till now, there's been more than one thousand participants.

Dot-IR on Firefox IDN White-list

2008-01-26T00:58:00.001+03:30

Just a quick notice. ".ir" TLD has been added to the IDN white-list of Firefox, and will be effective on next updates for 2.0 (Gecko 1.8.1.12) and beta-3.0 (Gecko 1.9).

Now you can use your Persian domain names, ".ایران.ir", easily in Firefox. Enjoy it!

P.S. ".ir" has been in white-list in IE since version 7.0.

On Bugmail RFE and My Bugzilla Accounts

2008-01-10T01:32:00.000+03:30

After my RFE, about adding an option to Bugmail to not put my email address in To/CC fields of email header, rejected as WORKSFORME by one of bugzilla maintainers (Mozilla bug 410671), I had to change my Bugzilla email addresses (GNOME, Mozilla, and freedesktop.org for now). I have added a "bugs+" to the beginning of previous one, so it's bugs+<my-name>@<this-blog-domain> from now on.

The reason for this change is that I prefer to use the Mute feature of Gmail, so I can get rid of some discussions, which I cannot unsubscribe them directly. Now I get them in the same mail box, but Gmail doesn't detect them as a To or CC one for me, so when I mute a bug, I won't see the thread again. The more interesting part is when a bug's title changes, I'll get it again, which seems very useful.

Internationalized Top-Level Domains

2007-10-16T03:16:00.000+03:30

After about a week that eleven Int'lized TLDs had been in root servers, yesterday ICANN officially announced them, the localized IDNwiki pages are open to the world. Here are the Persian one. Go ahead and test your softwares. Firefox has them in the IDN whitelist in the trunk, and will have them in an update for Firefox 2.0 soon. Unfortunately they started using pe as the two-letter code for Persian, which is not a standard, and know it's changed to per. I hope they fix it soon, and use just fa.

This is a big step forward to have dot-iran (.ایران) TLD in the root servers, which has currently more than two thousand registered domains. In fact supporting fully int'lized domain names was one of the major reasons of developing the new IRNIC domain registration system, which has been up since early September. Come on! Register a future dot-iran domain now!

Jalali GCal, Version 1.2

2007-01-03T05:07:00.001+03:30

Here are an update for Jalali GCal (old: Jalali Calendar for Google Calendar). Installing the new one will replace the previous version. Also I changed its description to Jalali calendar for the web interface of Google Calendar. All features work well on Firefox 1.5 on my Linux desktop. Bug reports are welcomed.

Update: Jalali GCal moved to Google Code

Mozilla/Firefox Hacks for Power Users (Hack 200C+0002)

2006-09-21T15:29:00.000+03:30

Here is some preferences I have set, and you may like to set them, if you are a power user, bidi user, or your locale is not en-US, but have to use this locale.

Newbie HOWTO: use "about:config" to set this key/values.

Power User:

layout.word_select.stop_at_punctuation
layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word

Set them to TRUE if you want Ctrl+Left/Right-Arrows stop at the start/end of alpha-numeric words (like what you get on Gtk+/Gnome). Default values make it to jump to the next/previous Space/Tab character! The second one also affects word boundary on selecting with mouse double-click.

browser.triple_click_selects_paragraph

(Mozilla >= 1.9, Firefox >= 3.0a1)
This option allows you to select whether triple click should select the whole paragraph, or just the line you are clicking. If it's FALSE, you can select the whole paragraph with quadruple-click (Wait, it doesn't work on Gtk+/Gnome, as Gtk+ doesn't support quadruple-click. If you like it, here are the Mozilla bug: #348751.)

network.http.max-persistent-connctions-per-proxy
network.http.max-persistent-connctions-per-server

If you use Tor, or any other proxy in your LAN, just set the first one to a big number (I use 50). Also I set the second one to 8, as Flickr and many other photo-sharing sites use just one domain for almost all images on the their pages, so I cannot get even two pages simultaneously. (maps.google.com is smart enough)

network.protocol-handler.external.ed2k
network.protocol-handler.app.ed2k

Here are how you can define a protocol and set the external application. In this example, I set ED2K protocol. Create the first key as Boolean, and set the value to TRUE. Then create the second key as String, and set the path to your ed2k link-handler ("/usr/bin/ed2k" for me) as its value. That's it.
Homework: Create a protocol-handler and write a script to handle Yahoo! Messenger links, and make GAIM do the requested action (add buddy, send message, etc). Of course you should mail them to me to get your point. :D)

mousewheel.horizscroll.*.action

Try possible values for this key (0..4 IIRC) to get more functions under your fingers (horizontal scroll of your professional mouse, or the touch-pad of your laptop).

Localization:

printer.printer_PostScript/*.print_paper_name

If you live in a country (or organization) which the default paper size is A4, not Letter, just set the value of this key to "A4".

browser.fixup.alternate.suffix

And if your want to set the default ".com" value to something else (i.e. ".co.uk" or ".ir"), just set it in this key.

Bi-Directional:

bidi.browser.ui

And this is the best part for Arabic, Iranian (Persian), and Israeli (Hebrew) users. Setting this key to TRUE will do some magic for you. You can switch the text direction and alignment of input fields with just one keystroke: Ctrk+Shift+X! Also you can switch the page direction from the View menu. Help yourself!

mousewheel.horizscroll.*.numlines

If you use Mozilla/Firefox in a right-to-left locale, just set the value of these keys to "1" instead of default "-1". Here are the Mozilla bug: #350594.

Ok, that's all. Let me know if you have problem with this hacks, or other L10n (localization), Bidi (bi-directional), or RTL (right-to-left) problems with Mozilla/Firefox.

Metro Lines I Have Used

2006-09-01T15:02:00.000+03:30

In order of time:

Here are Behdad's and Luis's. Should it be more than ten to blog it? I'm not sure... but, how you will update it?

What Microsoft did to Persian Language

2006-08-31T02:36:00.000+03:30

Recently I installed Microsoft's Persian UI for Windows XP. Seems like Microsoft can't do anything right for Persian. They use SPACE instead of ZWNJ everywhere in the UI. WTF?! After spending about 1.5 million USD on Persian (they even call it Farsi) support on Windows, the real Persian Windows is still a dream. They are practically removing ZWNJ from Persian, just because they don't know how to use it (or rather, their American-grown confused Iranians don't.)

Microsoft is the one who brought U+064A ARABIC LETTER YEH (Yeh with two dots bellow in final and isolate forms) to Persian, instead of U+06CC ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH (Yeh without any dots in final and isolate forms), with their buggy fonts. Even Windows Persian keyboard layout have never been compatible with the Iranian standard layout. Now it's so common to see Arabic Yeh and Keh instead of Persian ones everywhere, everytime. More info.

This story reminds me of an old joke:
A British guy was arguing with a Hindi guy.
The British guy says:
We f**ked your country for one hundred years!
The Hindi guy responds:
We f**ked your language forever!

Tehran Avenue and Intellectual Property

2006-08-20T18:08:00.000+03:30

New issue of Tehran Avenue online magazine has some articles and news about Intellectual Property issues in Iran, in both English and Persian. Here are the items:

Flickr Hack 200C+0001: EasyDownloadr

2006-06-01T17:09:00.000+03:30

Behdad and I prefer to have the "Original" size of a photo to view, or use (if it's under a CC lisence). So we wrote a Bookmarklet to make it easy to save the original size of an image on Flickr.

Here is the Flickr EasyDownloadr bookmarklet.

HOWTO: Right click on previous link. Bookmark it (preferably in Bookmarks Toolbar Folder and rename it if needed). Open the Flickr page of the image and use this bookmark to save the original size of the image.

UPDATE: And here are the Flickr EasyOpenr which just opens the original size.

Jalali Calendar for Google Calendar

2006-06-01T03:30:00.001+03:30

A couple weeks ago, I wrote the Jalali GCal user script (a JavaScript that Firefox runs on the web page if you have GreaseMonkey extension installed) to add Jalali Calendar (A.K.A. Iranian Calendar) to Google Calendar application.

As you can see in the screenshot, it adds Jalali year, month, and month days beside the Gregorian ones. (which makes it really useful for me! ;) This version (v1.1) supports all views: Day, Week, Month, Next 4 Days, and Agenda!

To use it, you should install GreaseMonkey (for Firefox 1.5), then open Jalali GCal user script and install it. Now refresh Google Calendar page.

Of course it's under LGPL license. I hope you like it.

Update: Jalali GCal moved to Google Code

Your Google public Calendar is NOT public!

2006-06-01T01:41:00.000+03:30

I use Google Calendar in day life and also maintain GUADEC 2006 iCal file and keep it synced with the schedule of The GNOME Conference. Stop! don't try to add that iCal link to your Google Calendar account. It doesn't work and you will get an error message.

Here are what happens:

Google's robots crawl the web and index all calendar files (i.e. iCal), and of course they check the robots.txt file to make sure they are allowed to do this.

Unfortunately, Google Calendar AJAX application checks robots.txt. May be it uses the indexed file at Google's server and so it's a side effect of the previous fact.

Unfortunately again Google's robots.txt file doesn't allow crawlers to index your public calendars.

Our iCal link is just an HTTP forward to the address of the file on Google's server. And yes, because of facts 2 and 3, you cannot add our iCal URL to your Google Calendar account! Not Google only, you cannot use it on any other web application that respect to robots.txt files. And of course you won't have your public calendar indexed in any search engine; but Google! It reminds me on how Microsoft tried to make its website somehow Netscape couldn't show it properly.

By the way, if you want to add GUADEC 2006 calendar to your Google Calendar account, just search for "GUADEC 2006" there, and add it directly. And send me a note if you need write access to it.

Update: Problems:

An organizer application (feed reader, calendar, etc) SHOULD NOT use robots.txt files, as it's NOT a crawler, it's just a user agent which do exactly what a user tells it (like a browser).

Google MUST allow other web crawlers to index public calendars, and NOT make a monopoly .

Intellectual Property in Iran

2006-03-03T13:12:00.000+03:30

Center for Technology Studies (SUT) held a workshop on intellectual property at Graduate School of Management and Economics (SUT). Kamran Bagheri, from Iran's Research Institute Of Petroleum Industry, lectured on the Intellectual Property Acts in US, EU and Iran. Here are some interesting news!

The Intellectual Property Act of Iran is under revision! It has been approved in the first vote in Parliament (Majlis), and in about seven months, it will be a law. Some effects of this act (as Mr. Bagheri told) will be increase in registration prices (i.e. you can get a patent for $30~40 by now) and international interest on copyright and patent registeration in Iran.

Update: Current amount of registered patents per year is about five thousands, that may increase up to fifty thousands with the new act.

I'm trying to get more information and will post here as soon as possible.

Journalists' Rights in Iran

2006-03-03T11:54:00.000+03:30

A couple of weeks ago, I missed the Speech of Kambiz Norouzi on Rights and Professional Morality of Photojournalism which was held on Iranian Artists Organization.

Based on news reports, Kambiz Norouzi will be in court branch no. 1083 of General Court of Tehran, headed by Judge Husseinian and he will defend himself. He is accused of propaganda against the establishment, irreverent comments and his accuser is general prosecutor.

Hope they let me to get to the session.

Kambiz Norouzi is a Lawyer and Lecturer on Press Rights in University and Media Education Center in Iran. More about Kambiz Norouzi: English, Persian, Persian (misspell)

GUADEC Logo Design Contest

2006-02-01T15:11:00.000+03:30

Here are my works for the GUADEC logo design contest. You can find my complete set of GUADEC Logos at my photostream.

And the LORD said: Vim

2006-01-27T01:48:00.000+03:30

And the LORD said, behold, editor is one, and it has one binding language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Bram sent an email titled "Vim mapping" to announce mailing list, so I joined the group at Frappr. The map is found here: http://www.frappr.com/vim.

GNOME's marketing slogan for 2006

2005-12-10T20:45:00.000+03:30

GNOME's marketing slogan for 2006 Originally uploaded by ZWNJ.

Last week, FootNotes held a brainstorming for a Motto/Slogan for GNOME.

Seeing the poll for the final results, my suggestion is at the first place! This would be my best contribution to the GNOME project; after all those patches for Character Map, Pango, etc.

Horizontal theme for Guifications

2005-11-10T15:38:00.000+03:30

Horizontal theme for Guification Originally uploaded by ZWNJ.

Here are my Horizontal theme for Gaim's Guifications plugin.

Download horizontal-1.0.tar.gz
Download horizontal-1.0.zip

Just sets "IM Message", "Invited", "Name Spoken", "Topic Changed" and "Warned" event, as they are the only feature that I use.

Ubuntu HOWTO:


$ sudo apt-get install gaim-guifications wget
$ mkdir -p ~/.gaim/guifications/themes/
$ wget http://zwnj.org/proj/guifications/horizontal-1.0.tar.gz -O - | tar -zx -C ~/.gaim/guifications/themes/