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GNU FriBidi

GNU FriBidi is an implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (bidi).

The GNU FriBidi API is not finished yet, and the design is by no means set in stone. Right now we are working on a new design for GNU FriBidi, which has led to a new code base, not released yet. The main goal of this new effort at the moment is to add support for Arabic Joining/Shaping. One of the main goals as a GNU project is to be widely used. If you decide not to use it, mail us and let us know your rationale - design, licensing, indentation style, we prefer to know.

GNU FriBidi has no required dependencies. The list of projects using GNU FriBidi is growing and they provide a wealth of examples of using the various APIs to learn from.

Trying out GNU FriBidi in sample applications is encouraged - we want to get it widely used and tested. It should be working pretty well these days, and when it is not, bug reports are more than welcome.

GNU FriBidi was formerly hosted on sourceforge.net. It was moved to freedesktop.org after being dubbed a GNU project by Richard Stallman twice!

Mailinglist

All GNU FriBidi discussion is currently on fribidi at lists freedesktop org (formerly fribidi-discuss at sourceforge net).

CVS

We are using the freedesktop.org CVS. The CVS repository is "fribidi".

The CVS module of the 0.10.x releases is available in module "fribidi". You can browse it with here. Make sure you check out the STABLE branch. HEAD branch is some dead API change.

The code for the 0.19.x releases is in module "fribidi2". You can browse it here.

CVS commits can be monitored on the fribidi-commit mailing list.

Bugs & Patches

Please report bugs (and submit patches) through the Bugzilla (preferred), or send them to bug-fribidi at gnu org.

Download

The latest stable release in the 0.10 series is fribidi-0.10.9.tar.gz (md5sum, signed by Behdad Esfahbod) from August 9, 2007. This release is based on Unicode 5.0.0 character database.

There is a release of the fribidi2 modules available now, which is fribidi-0.19.1.tar.gz (md5sum, signed by Behdad Esfahbod) from January 15, 2008. This release is based on Unicode 5.0.0 character database too and is supposed to be fully API/ABI compatible with the 0.10 series and may need some testing before fully replacing the 0.10 series.