QLB (قلب) - Program in Arabic, display algorithms as calligraphy
Neat. I also wrote a bunch of Arabic Lisps, most toys that went nowhere :-)<p>My biggest obstacle has so far been <i>language</i> itself: I think I'm too much of an Arabic snob to settle for simple, dictionary translation of some technical terms. I also hate transliterating, so I got distracted by months long process of compiling a dictionary.<p>To give you an example, Qlb replies with "letter is unexpected" when it really means "symbol". حرف vs رمز. A Lisp evaluator operates on expressions, of which symbols are a subset.<p>Even within technical English, words like letter and character do NOT mean the same thing, though they are similar.<p>Most of computational concepts one wants to expound either exist or have strong counterparts in the classical Arabic linguistic, rhetoric and logical traditions. Though not a strict requirement, the Arabic PL designer would benefit greatly from familiarity with the Classical, very abstract and deductive, byt often non-secular, works.<p>One of my favorite games is to read a passage out, say, a type-theoretic paper and try to translate it to Arabic :-)<p>[Edit:<p>It <i>is</i> an excellent hack this, but Arabic side of things could use more polishing. قول is not a verb, but قُل is. قول or مقولة means "utterance", not the very "say" as you might intend. لقوله، قم الليل الا قليلا<p>]