Re: Encoding the Holy Koran into Unicode

[Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at myrealbox dot com>]

Thanks a lot for this positive attitude and whether we can benefit from it or 
not I ask Allah to bless you all again and I will do my best to publicize 
your nice software. From now on I am in your marketing department ;-). I will 
discuss the whole thing with the group and reply to you whenever there is 
enough info. The problem now is that Mr. Muhammad Yousif who has begun the 
Quran project has disappeared suddenly from the list. We, really, hope he is 
Ok. Until we find him I propose two ideas for now:

1. If we can't go for the whole thing it's better not to leave it altogether. 
Therefore, to accept the OpenType Unicode font with its apparent difficiency 
for now is better than to go with other fonts (let alone our trial to scan 
the letters which is done by Ossama). The best option we have for now IMHO 
is: KacstQr.ttf which is a GPL font from the KacstArabicFonts-1.3 package at 
http://ceri.kacst.edu.sa/download/

2. Why not considering porting your program to linux as a commercial project. 
If it's programmed with Java which is cross-platform it should work out of 
the box or may need some tweaking, right?
Otherwise we could consider doing it ourselves with your supervision in a way 
that won't cause harm to you from a commercial point of view. We have to 
discuss it also.

Finally, I suggest you subscribe to the developer list so you can post there. 
I've forwarded your last mail in behalf of you.
في 4:48 م إثنين 07 ابريل 2003، كتبت:
> Salaam Munzir,
>
> I thank you for your kind comments. It is always a pleasure to receive
> complements from my peers. I will pass this on to others in Diwan.
>
> I sent one file to you - the second file is because the file was sent from
> a Mac.
>
> Diwan's Quran project has been a labour of love. I think anyone who
> approached this project from a commercial point of view would never have
> started. It has taken Diwan about 5 years to full research the issues
> involved and another 2 years to turn this into a final product.
>
> Diwan's nearest office to Saudi Arabia is in Dubai. We do have agents in
> Saudi Arabia but it is better to contact the Dubai office directly.
>
> Their address is:
>
> Diwan Software Dubai
> Office 128 Building 1
> Dubai Internet City
> Dubai, PO BOX 27370
> UAE
>
> tel: 00 971 4 391 1888
> fax: 00 971 4 391 1898
>
>
> I would be very pleased to cooperate with the open source community in any
> way possible. But you must bear in mind that Diwan is a relatively small
> company and it has to protect its main assets to stay in business - of
> which the Quran project is one.
>
> As I have said, the OpenType font format is insufficient to deal with the
> requirements of Quran and also the Unicode specification does not help
> either - Diwan used its own text engine to handle the formatting correctly.
> A Quran font on its own would not provide a proper solution- so simply
> licensing a font from Diwan would not really be the way to go. I do not
> know how we can proceed on any form of cooperation but I am open to any
> suggestions you may have.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Adil
>

-- 
Munzir Taha,
Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer,
Certified Internet Webmaster, (CIW),
Microsoft Office User Specialist, (MOUS),
New Horizons Computer Learning Centers,
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia