LibreOffice Localization Project at KACST in Saudi Arabia

To enhance the Arabic language support in LibreOffice and to participate in solving related bugs as well as contribute to the improvement and development of the LibreOffice product, the National Program for Free and Open Source Software Technologies (Motah) at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia has launched recently a LibreOffice localization project.

The project is one of the activities of Motah program at KACST, where several software products in various fields are studied to explore the extent of their Arabic support and their suitability to the needs of Arab users. Thereafter, Motah team will participate in improving the selected software products to meet those needs and requirements. LibreOffice was selected to be the first localization project because of its importance as an office application where its functions are needed by all computer users. The talk would cover the following points:

1. Present the current work on analyzing LibreOffice code, this include:

   • Establish a Module-Layer Structure for LibreOffice source code

   • Increase the volume of code that is compatible with Doxygen

   • Write readme files for modules that lack such files

   • represent and document the flow of triggering events or functions calls that happen in the Libreoffice product

   • Study of Rendering in LibreOffice. Code Analysis on how rendering is handled in Libreoffice.End Result has to be Document describing the study and details of Rendering, Contribute back to LibreOffice Documents.

2. Present the process of analyzing, filtering and selecting bugs related to Arabic language and present the list of solved bugs

3. Present the ongoing work to enhance the LibreOffice user experience

4. Present the ongoing work on improving the Arabic documentation as well as improving the 'Arabization' of the graphical user interface, by reviewing and enhancing the existing translations