Any news? Any upcoming version?

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tajmone
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by tajmone »

Petr Solin wrote: 20 Dec 2017, 22:35But I don't think it is a good idea to not support RTL names in general.
I agree. I work a lot with GitHub repos and often I end up cloning locally projects in all sorts of languages (either the project was created by some user from a country with a RTL language, or because of i18n there will be some folders and files in RTL languages). Besides, I work with RTL languages myself.

Unicode was a great step forward, and it has already become well grounded in most OSs and apps.

Also, the RTL support doesn't affect only paths and file names, it also affects plugins (parameters, arguments, input and output). So I agree 100% that Unicode awareness in AS needs to be properly implemented; if not, unexpected result might ensue from interactions with the environment and other tools. But I do understand that it's going to be a major work, requiring rewriting a great deal of code (and possibly tweaking every function dealing with strings).

Surely, adding full RTL support is too huge a task, but this was to say that just handling strings visualization is complex. And if you accept paths and filenames with micxed RTL and LTR, you must support basic operations with these — think of the Rename plugin, for example. How is it going to handle RegExe renaming for multiple files with mixed directions?

Search operations bring another level of coplexity. In Hebrew and Arabic all vowels should be stripped out from the search terms and the searched items. If AS will support mixed direction filenames and paths, then this might affect also search and filter operations.

I recently peeked at some Python libraries for Arabic that prof. طه زروقي created to handle these problems:

https://github.com/linuxscout

... he went to great lengths to handle the cases mentioned above — ie: stripping vowels for searching and indexing, etc. — and these libraries are well known. The problem is that they are language specific, and my guess is that there similar libraries for each specific language.

Just think of the problem of asciibetical sorting... There are lots of Unicode libraries out there that provide (or promise) locale support for ascii- (well, Unicode really) sorting, as every locale has a different order for its alphabet (eg, letters with diacritics or accents are grouped togehter). But not many such libraries are able to handle sorting semitic and Asian languages (or to do it well and in an optimized way).
Last edited by tajmone on 07 Jan 2018, 00:22, edited 3 times in total.
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tajmone
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by tajmone »

Petr Solin wrote: 06 Nov 2017, 21:21 Yes, it's easy to display one RTL file name, e.g. מזל or טוב. But try to display path which contains these two names: c:\מזל\טוב. Maybe you cannot see what's wrong. First name is displayed on right side, then backslash, and then second name on left side, but in our LTR system it is wrong. It should be: c:\טוב\מזל.
True, and the "mazel tov" example is even a rather simple case to handle (Hebrew has no cursive ligatures).
Petr Solin wrote: 06 Nov 2017, 21:21 Another problem is shortening of these names when column width is narrow to display whole name, ellipsis (...) should be on the left side instead of right side for RTL name. Shortening of path is more complicated. And these things are even harder for bi-directional texts, changing of text direction can be nested several times.
True, and the "mazel tov" example above is even a rather simple case to handle: Hebrew has no cursive ligatures, but Arabic does and they make truncations even more difficoult because by disjoining a word the consonants change shape (a middle letter becomes final, and the other one becomes initial). Also, all semitics languages might carry vowels and other consonantic symbols, so chosing where to truncate a word is not so easy because you have to check wether the last consonant had vowels and/or symbols.

Also, some Hebrew consonants take different shapes when they occur at the end of a word — which means a different unicode char. For example פ (letter Pe) in the middle of a word is U+05E4, but if you truncate that word then it needs to become ף whic is U+05E3:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_a ... w_alphabet

While the filename/path remains the same, there are visual considerations to keep in mind when handling the UI. And it's not just an issue of the consonant not looking right to native speakers of that language, there is also the problem that orhpaned vowels and consonantic symbols (which are common in paths and filenames) would produce orrible garbage in the UI controls (since they don't have a consonant to align to, they will end up spreading around vertically and horizontally).

With Arabic the whole issue is much more complex, as the 29 consonants are presented by a lot more Unicode entities — the Unicode Arabic alphabet also includes some Persian and Urdu consonants for transliterating foreign language sounds not present in Arabic (like P, V, etc.):

https://www.key-shortcut.com/en/writing ... -alphabet/

As if this wasn't enough, some adjoining consonants combinations require the two consonants to be joined into a single Unicode entity. That is to say that any manipulation of strings with mixed LTR and RTL, and certain non latin languages, require some careful thoughts. Although I also believe that the WinAPI should offer helpers to handle most of these cases.
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tosi
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by tosi »

I know this was said here before, and you want to do it properly, but could you just add UTF support for all the european languages (e.g. Czech :)) without the RTL support? So if you use RTL language, it would be broken. But it would be at least fixed for all the other LTR countries? I don't want to install Czech regional environment just because of Salamander. I had to rename all my punctuated folders or use Windows explorer more often.
camper
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by camper »

tajmone, now you've delayed the next Altap Salamander for further 5 years. ;)

tosi: +1 (not the perfect solution, but an intermediate one which should solve a lot of problems for >50% of your users)
Petr Solin
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by Petr Solin »

We are trying to make some compromise solution. It should not ignore RTL languages but it will surely not handle all complexity of them. We can always make better RTL and bi-di strings support if users will need it.

Other file managers do not care much, so it seems it is not so important. We know it and will not spend more time on it now.

Thanks for information about RTL languages, we have met part of these problems and I think handle them well enough. Or at least trying to handle them and not ignore them like others, e.g. Windows Explorer in Windows 10 (version 1709, build 16299.192) - if filename contains right-to-left-override, it messes error messages like this ("cannot be compressed" is written in wrong direction, so it's not well readable):
msg1.png
msg1.png (14.23 KiB) Viewed 852509 times
Dangph
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by Dangph »

Personally I would be happy to pay money if that would speed up development. I hope you will release the unicode version as v4.0 and charge an upgrade fee. Just speaking for myself.
omega
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by omega »

Dangph wrote: 05 Mar 2018, 03:57 Personally I would be happy to pay money if that would speed up development. I hope you will release the unicode version as v4.0 and charge an upgrade fee. Just speaking for myself.
This is a small software development company 2-3 developers i think, i don't see how paying a bit more money for a license would be speeding things up.

Some update on the progress would be nice, release date or perhaps a release candidate available?
Dangph
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by Dangph »

omega wrote: 07 Mar 2018, 04:06This is a small software development company 2-3 developers i think, i don't see how paying a bit more money for a license would be speeding things up.
More revenue would mean they could afford to spend more time on the product.
omega
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by omega »

Dangph wrote: 08 Mar 2018, 03:04
omega wrote: 07 Mar 2018, 04:06This is a small software development company 2-3 developers i think, i don't see how paying a bit more money for a license would be speeding things up.
More revenue would mean they could afford to spend more time on the product.
You mean ever since the mid 90s the developers spend little time on the product? lol
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stepand76
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by stepand76 »

Dangph wrote: 08 Mar 2018, 03:04 More revenue would mean they could afford to spend more time on the product.
I'm pretty sure that they spent all the time on the product. They haven't no other product in their portfolio.
In the other hand it would be great to have new Pre-release (or EAP or whatever) as an eveidence about the developement progress to convince users to buy the product before new stable version is released.
Dangph
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by Dangph »

stepand76 wrote: 11 Mar 2018, 22:12 I'm pretty sure that they spent all the time on the product. They haven't no other product in their portfolio.
I seem to recall them saying that developing Salamander was not their main job, and it wasn't very profitable.
rollhigh
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by rollhigh »

I'd pay again and a higher price for a new version, if it meant speedier development and more useful features were more forthcoming.

I use Salamander every day of my working life, I'd be lost without it, so I hope it can continue to keep up the pace with how quickly the latest Microsoft OS keeps changing every season.

The main drawback still for me is still no proper unicode support. That's a big downer as I would love it to work properly.

I know its being worked on but realistically there hasn't been a single update to the software since end of 2016.

In a way that shows how great its been as its stood the test of time but even for example 5 star hotels need a refurbishment from time to time to keep up with current standards and improvements if you get what i'm saying... :)
omega
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by omega »

Dangph wrote: 19 Mar 2018, 03:53
stepand76 wrote: 11 Mar 2018, 22:12 I'm pretty sure that they spent all the time on the product. They haven't no other product in their portfolio.
I seem to recall them saying that developing Salamander was not their main job, and it wasn't very profitable.
Now this is news to us here
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tukanos
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by tukanos »

omega wrote: 21 Mar 2018, 05:45
Dangph wrote: 19 Mar 2018, 03:53
stepand76 wrote: 11 Mar 2018, 22:12 I'm pretty sure that they spent all the time on the product. They haven't no other product in their portfolio.
I seem to recall them saying that developing Salamander was not their main job, and it wasn't very profitable.
Now this is news to us here
I did not see such information. Till the developers confirm it or deny it, it is just another random comment.
Jan Rysavy
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Re: Any news? Any upcoming version?

Post by Jan Rysavy »

Dangph wrote: 19 Mar 2018, 03:53 I seem to recall them saying that developing Salamander was not their main job, and it wasn't very profitable.
We have no idea where it comes from. Please let us know, maybe we forgot to send invoice somewhere :)

Salamander is our main job, unfortunately running small company in Czech Republic and EU is time consuming nowadays. There are layers and layers of administrative work, ongoing law changes, latest was EET implementation, changes at PayPal, Paymill, MOSS scheme, etc. We really hate it :(

We are migrating Salamander code base to the Unicode and working on High DPI support right now.
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