[Fsf-friends] Taking a look... at some recent developments in Urdu computing (from BytesForAll, South Asia)

Mon Dec 17 22:52:06 IST 2007

BYTESFORALL: A LOOK AT SOME URDU DEVELOPMENTS...

Some useful and interesting links from the UrduComputing mailing list
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/urdu_computing

URDU NVU RELEASE

Huda Sarfraz huda.sarfraz at nu.edu.pk: The current release of
the Nvu localization includes the Urdu Nvu installer for
Windows, which has it's GUI in Urdu. Work to be done for
future releases includes changing the layout direction of
Urdu Nvu to right-to-left. For download and installation
details, please go to Urdu Nvu Windows Installer.
 http://www.crulp.org/software/localization/OSS/NVu.html

Nvu (pronounced "N-view") is a WYSIWYG HTML editor, based on
the Composer component of Mozilla Application Suite and Gecko
1.7. It is a common WYSIWYG editor for Linux and is intended
to be an open source equivalent to proprietary software like
Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver (although to
date it is missing many features they possess). As a WYSIWYG
editor, it is designed to be easy for novice users and does
not require any knowledge of HTML or CSS to use. The project
was started by and sponsored by Linspire. Linspire hired
Daniel Glazman, former Netscape Communications Corporation
employee and CEO/Founder of Disruptive Innovations, to be
lead developer. Nvu is available for Linux, Mac OS X and
Microsoft Windows, and it can be built successfully on any
platform with the Netscape Portable Runtime. (Source: Wikipedia)

* * *

ONLINE DICTIONARY:

Aijaz Akhtar aijazakhtar at rediffmail.com: A very good
Dictionary is now available on line. Its huge database,
Unicode nature, and Nafees Web Naskh font give it an edge
over other on line dictionary sites. Visit here:
http://www.urduenglishdictionary.org/

[Works fine in FireFox 2.0.0.9, on Windows XP-SP2 with Urdu
fonts and phonetic keyboard installed for MS Office.  When
doing Urdu to English search, you will need to switch your
keyboard to Urdu from the language bar.]

* * *

GNU/LINUX WINDOW MANAGER xfce IN URDU:

Aijaz Akhtar aijazakhtar at rediffmail.com: Very good news. A
low end yet powerful window maker for Linux is now translated
into Urdu by Makki. XFCE may not be as beautiful an interface
as KDE or Gnome for Linux, yet it is powerful and consumes
less processor power and is light on RAM requirements, making
it suitable even on a pentium-1 or 2 machine with 400-500 MHZ
processor (Correct me if I am wrong). So now one can download
this, and configure your Linux (with XFCE preloaded, since it
is not bundled with in some Linux disros) to use Urdu
interface of Linux. Download presently from here:
 http://www.4shared.com/file/28497917/a3c84cdc/xfce_441_Urdu_Translation_by_Makki.html
Soon to be uploaded in the download section of
http://urduweb.org. Mohammed Ali Makki had already translated
and made available Urdu Slax earlier that is available here:
http://www.urduweb.org/mehfil/local_links.php?catid=19

* * *

HINDI TO URDU TRANSLITERATOR:

Abdur Radhid: arnandan at yahoo.com A beta version of Hindi to
Urdu Transliterator is available on line. Please give your
feedback. Visit here: http://hindi2urdu.tripod.com

COMPILED IN PUBLIC INTEREST BY:
* * *

TYPING IN URDU, UBUNTU ETC:

Ali Hussnain Shah: hussnain_shah at gmx.net as a starting point
you can use crulp's Urdu Layout for Linux at
http://www.crulp.org/software/localization/keyboards/linuxphonetickb.html

There should be one text file containing the key mappings.
You can us it to learn and change it as you like and use that
on linux.

After you have developed a standard keyboard and if this
should be included in all Linux distributions, submitting it
to xorg (opensource implementation X Window System, on which
KDE,Gnome are based) would be better.. their mailing list is
at http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg

After submission to xorg it will be included in all linux
distributtions (debian, suse, ubuntu ...) as soon the
distribution uses a new version of the X system. I think
Sergey Udaltsov is responsible for handling of the X input
system there in the list.

* * *

PAKTYPE NASKH BASIC FONT:

Lateef Sagar Shaikh lateef_sagar at yahoo.com: I have created
PakType Naskh Basic 1.0 font, which is available at:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/paktype
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/paktype/files/NaskhBasic/1.0/

This font supports following languages: Amazigh, Arabic,
Balochi, Balti, Berber, Brahui, Burushaski, Farsi, Fulani,
Gojri, Hausa, Hindko, Kalami, Kanuri, Kashmiri, Khowar,
Kurdish, Ladakhi, Maba, Malay, Mandinka, Ormuri, Pashto,
Pathwari, Punjabi, Saraiki, Shina, Sindhi, Somali, Swahili,
Torwali, Turkish, Urdu and Uyghur and others.

This font is free for distribution and modification under
GPL.  Glyphs taken from ArabEyes.org font KacstQurn, having
following copyright notice; KACST holds the copyright of the
included Arabic font which is donated under GPL by KACST. URW
Design and Development holds the copyright of the included
Latin font which is donated under GPL by URW.

* * *

LIGATURE-BASD NASTALEEQ WRITING SYSTEM:

Sarmad Hussain sarmad.hussain at nu.edu.pk: In 1980 Mr. Ahmad
Mirza Jamil developed a ligature based Nastaleeq writing
system. He has written about 18,000 valid ligatures of Urdu
and developed a Noori Nastaliq font.

Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) is
releasing a soft copy of these ligatures in Unicode format.
CRULP has extensively used these ligatures for testing the
fonts developed at the center and realised that it will be a
valuable resource for other font developers. These ligatures
are grouped in 2 to 8 characters and are sorted in the end
character order.  The ligatures can be downloaded from
www.crulp.org.

Reference: "Noori Nastaliq computerised Urdu calligraphy
(list of ligatures)," calligraphically designed and compiled
by Ahmad Mirza Jamil, Elite Press, Karachi.

* * *

URDU AND PHOTOSHOP CS2:

Imran Ahmed imran1 at optonline.net: Why Urdu isn't supported in
Photoshop CS2:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Adobe-Photoshop-1028/Urdu-Images-Photoshop.htm

* * *

SEVERAL KEYBOARD LAYOUTS:

 Imran Ahmad imran1 at optonline.net: For the past couple of
years I have been trying to find easy way to type in Urdu on
computer. For these reasons I tried several Urdu keyboard
layout such as pakUrdu, Bhurgri, NLA, Phonetic, phonetic-2,
Ishaque, Olympia, Urdu Mahir, and MS_UR_KB. The fact that
there are so many Urdu keyboard layouts while not having any
standard set, made it more complex to achieve my goal.
Finally I end up sticking with Microsoft Urdu keyboard, but
the options for clear fonts type still lacks.
--
Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org Ph +91-832-2409490
Links from Goa: http://goalinks.livejournal.com/