Maybe it's not bad news for everyone , but it is for me at least

As Jussi Mäkinen said on Dubai Meeting that Arabic language will not be supported yet as writing and sending SMS ..etc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkiivAuMmBo#t=1m38s


so it will be released in the Middle East without an Arabic Interface, Arabic keyboard or even Arabic writing support

that for sure will decrease the sales in the area cause a lot of regular users can't use a phone without ,at least, arabic writing support .

That's awkward considering Linux supports this quite well from what I've heard...
What's really missing to add support? Fonts?
As for keyboard, some stickers and xmodmap might do the trick, I don't know :/

probably you need to package your own i18n. it's probably the same thing with CJK support.

(This thread fits better to the Maemo 5 forum since there are solutions at software level)

The good news is that it's all open source and it is possible to get it working just as integrated as the officially supported languages.

Contact Mohammed Sameer and Matan Ziv-av to know the status of the work they did for Maemo 4 and the N800/N810, and whether they have plans to bring Arabic to Maemo 5.
http://foolab.org/node/1719
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/him-arabic/
http://twitter.com/Msameer
http://maemo.org/profile/view/matan/

See also One Click HEBREW Install - Input Method, Fonts and Locale Fix (mentions an Arabic plugin)

EDIT: hope it helps --> http://twitter.com/quimgil/status/5194483845

Viewing Arabic messages and web pages works. I've used them personally.

Arabic in modest seems to work too. Someone told me (Can't remember who ;-))

So the fonts are there. What we need is a way to enter arabic which is probably a plugin for the on-screen keyboard.

I wrote a plugin for N810/Diablo but didn't yet have time to port it to Maemo5. I'll try again as soon as the HIM plugins documentation for Maemo5 becomes available.

As for an Arabic UI, I'm not personally interested in that and will not help with the actual work but I can help with packaging and/or bringing interested people together.

It's just a matter of time :-)

R-R
Thanks for your post . a lot of my friends has been disappointed when they knew about it .

the stickers are good solution and the laser is even better but when it comes like officially it makes you feel good




bbns
Maybe it's a good Idea except that I'm not a programmer but I want to help by any way even if I have to learn how to do that .




qgil
Big Big thanks for helping and here is MSameer

and you are 100% right , this thread suppose to be in Maemo 5 forum so I hope anyone can move it there




MSameer
the problem is not with me or with you since you can read and type in English , the problem is for the Arabian regular users which will ask first thing about supporting the Arabic language as you know

At this moment a lot of people on Arabic forums are discussing this problem and some of them start thinking about search for a new device other than N900 .

I'm afraid that when the N900 released it will not have a lot of Arabic users and the sales of this great phone will go down in the Middle East for a small problem such this .

I don't think that on-screen keyboard will solve the problem because some people will think like "Why I have to use the on-screen keyboard when I have a physical keyboard ?" .
My Idea is to make the physical and the on-screen keyboard supporting Arabic (I don't know if that possible or not but I believe that there is nothing impossible on Maemo 5 )

Someone will ask "If we make the keyboard supporting Arabic , how could we change the keyboard language when we need to write in other language ?" . The easiest way to do that is to have a small language icon on the top of the screen with the mobile information icons , so if you have to change the language of the keyboard , all what you have to do is click the icon and chose the language you want .


I want to help by more than just an Idea but thats all what I have
<== blaming himself for not learning programming

I hope with all my heart that the solution will come before N900 release

Just to set the expectations right: Arabic hardware keyboard and Arabic localization of pre-installed system and applications is not in the current plans. Never say never, but I personally doubt we will see this officially supported in Maemo 5.

I'm happy helping getting things done in the software side when it comes to push documentation or strings out. Yesterday I got a question about Catalan, which has common problems with Arabic and any non-supported language. It is expected that more volunteer translators from other languages will show up.

For third party Maemo software there is community project to make a framework to allow volunteers to provide translation for software. A testbed for application Conboy can be found and discussed here.

fwiw there are some Arabic related locale settings when selecting Region in the latest image I'm testing:

Arabic (Bahrain)
Arabic (Kuwait)
Arabic (Oman)
Arabic (Qatar)
Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
Arabic (United Arab Emirates)

This is only used for locale settings such a timezone, currency units and so on. Better than nothing...

Well, Arabic fonts are there, we chose 3 pretty good fonts for you to enjoy. Rendering works perfectly in browser, pdf reader, file manager, you name it. Also, text is automativally rendered right to left automatically. Media file content is extracted in arabic as well and overall, there should be very nice arabic experience support by default on the device. A big thing that is missing is the input support and the translations. But we are eagerly awaiting for community contributions for those.

Messaging also works well. [Edit] Of course only for *receiving*