Re: Useful info for The Quran Project

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

> As I have said earlier I am interested, and I am
> wondering why do you need step 2. is it because of 
> a completely different encoding, no mapping can be 
> done with current ones?, why not use the current 
> texts?, and if you can't use them in their 
> entirety, surely they will save lots
> of work if some type of partial mapping exist?

That is very true, and that is what we have been
doing. We took an existing text and corrected that.
However there is still "a lot" of details the text is
missing to the extent that it may be easier to retype
parts of the text. That is why the typers are
necessary. But honestly most of the work would be
reviewing. Going over and over the whole Quran text
until you don't find mistakes any more. This effort
requires many many hours of sitting in front of the
computer (or printing it out) and reviewing the text,
but does not require expertise in any field. As long
as you can recognize Arabic characters you can
contribute.

Also inshallah we would like to encode some of the
oldest Quran manuscripts as well, such as Tashkent
Quran (Gold Quran). There are slight variations in the
text of some of these older manuscripts (for instance
there are not tashkils). These older manuscripts like
Tashkent need to be completely retyped since there
isn't any computer text available today (actually even
retrieving the images of the original is a challenge).

But in the end, most of the work that goes into Step 2
is Review, Review, Review. It's crucial that you don't
have even one mistake in the text.

I will keep you in my list of interested Walid.
Inshallah I will let you know when there is a new
development regarding this project. Currently we are
still communicating back and forth with some
individuals in other organizations to get the project
started.

Regards,
Mete

--- Walid Shaari <shaari at arabeyes dot org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 22:48, Mete Kural wrote:
> 
> > Such a project would have two parts:
> > 1) Developing the font(s) according to a set of
> proper
> > encoding rules
> > 2) Encoding the Quran text based on the encoding
> rules
> > that were specified in step 1
> > 
> > Step 1 requires a lot of knowledge of smart font
> > technologies like OpenType and also a thorough
> > knowledge of the orthographic properties of the
> Arabic
> > language. This is where "experts" are needed.
> > 
> > For step 2, you don't need to be an "expert" of
> font
> > technology or Arabic. In fact you don't even need
> to
> > know Arabic. This step could be divided into two
> > groups of people.
> > 
> > 1) A group of typers who will type the Quran into
> the
> > computer.
> > 2) A group of reviewers who will review what the
> > typers typed and report their mistakes back to
> them.
> > 
> > I would like to ask who would be interested in
> > contributing to such a project. If you have
> interest
> > please email me. You don't need to make a
> commitment
> > or anything, just pure interest in this kind of a
> > project.
> > 
> > Should I count you as interested Walid?
> 
> As I have said earlier I am interested, and I am
> wondering why do you
> need step 2. is it because of a completely different
> encoding, no
> mapping can be done with current ones?, why not use
> the current texts?,
> and if you can't use them in their entirety, surely
> they will save lots
> of work if some type of partial mapping exist?.
> 
> Walid.
> 
> 
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