Dear Persians

This document has been provided to use as a step by step guide in order to show man pages of pkgtools (containing explodepkg, installpkg, makepkg, upgradepkg, removepkg and pkgtool) and slackpkg (containing slackpkg and slackpkg.conf file) as primary  package managers of Slackware Linux in Persian language.

As you know at the moment there are many difficulties concerning rendering of Persian glyphs and line direction on CLI environments. Hence, we have to use a time consuming approach to repeatedly create and check translated man pages with different tools in order to make sure they are readable by Persians. Feel free to mail your opinions to h_sadeqzade@outlook.com

Prerequisites

In order to correctly see Persian man pages you must install these packages on your Slackware system:

slint: a polygot package containing man pages in different languages and bidiman script.

mlterm: a X based terminal which has the ability to render Persian glyphs and RTL line direction.

bicon: a tool for rendering Persian Linux under Linux console

fbterm: a Linux frame buffer

Download these packages according your system architecture from  http://slint.fr/packages

Except slint package, installing other packages depends on the environment which is used to see man pages. For instance if you are sure that you will not use man pages under Linux console or frame buffer, you don't need to install bicon and fbterm packages. You can use this command to install these packages on your system (root privilege needed) :

upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new <package>

For instance in order to install mlterm on your 64 bit system, go to download directory and run this command:

upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new mlterm-3.6.0-x86_64-1_slint.tgz

Showing man pages under X terminals

You don't have any main issue if use mlterm to see Persian man pages. Just type this command in mlterm:

LANG=fa_IR GROFF_ENCODING=UTF-8 man <man page>

For instance in order to see Persian man page of installpkg tool just type:

LANG=fa_IR GROFF_ENCODING=UTF-8 man installpkg

mlterm is the recommended tool to see man pages under X, however if you don't like it you can use Xfce-terminal by typing these command (Xfce-terminal is part of Xfce  desktop which is installed on your system through Full Slackware installation. You can use it on other Desktops either):

LANG=fa_IR GROFF_ENCODING=UTF-8 man <man page> |fribidi --nobreak –wrt|most

or

LANG=fa_IR bidiman <man page>

bidiman is a little script which is installed on your system alongside slint package and its duty is reducing your type time.

Note that by this method some dis-joined bold glyphs would be showed as joined form.

Showing man pages under Linux console

In order to see Persian man pages under raw Linux console you need bicon. After installing it type:

bicon ir

LANG=fa_IR GROFF_ENCODING=UTF-8 man <man page> |fribidi --nobreak –wrt|most

or

LANG=fa_IR bidiman <man page>

Showing man pages under frame buffer

Install fbterm on your system. Launch it under Linux console and after typing your user and password you can use two method to see Persian man pages:

1:

LANG=fa_IR GROFF_ENCODING=UTF-8 man <man page> |fribidi --nobreak –wrt|most

or

LANG=fa_IR bidiman <man page>

2:

bicon ir

LANG=fa_IR GROFF_ENCODING=UTF-8 man <man page>