[Wikipedia-l] One Wikipedia - two scripts

Erdal Ronahi erdal.ronahi at gmx.net
Tue Oct 12 00:08:38 UTC 2004


Hi there!

We on ku: have a problem. Kurdish uses two different scripts, latin and 
arabic. You can see both on the main page at http://ku.wikipedia.org. To 
keep the Kurdish Wikipedia together we would like to have both scripts 
in one Wikipedia. But there are some problems:

* Though unicode supports the Arabic-letter Kurdish alphabet, very few 
fonts do. In the internet a special font named "Unikurd Web" is the 
de-facto standard for used on almost all websites. We use a template on 
every page that enforces the use of this font, but that does not work 
for the headings. Therefore there are wrong letters in the headings. See 
http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/mallewe for an example. The letter that 
looks like a "L" that has turned around is from a different font.

Can this be solved with a global style sheet or something similar? The 
font is compatible with Unicode, so Arabic of Farsi words would not be 
harmed.

To solve this problem would be the most important thing, because then 
all texts will be readable. Other minor problems:

* The font ennforcing template {{rtl}} must be repeated after each 
heading. That will probably solve with the first problem.
* Dotted lists cross the right border when used on right-to-left pages. 
(Also an example on http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/mallewe)

Thanks,
Erdal



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