Re: Encoding the Holy Koran into Unicode

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Salaamun Aleykum Munzir, Adil and others,

It is good to hear interest in a Quran encoding
project. We have been trying to raise such interest in
various communities for some time. So far, the
encoding of the Quran in digital form has been a very
fragmented area. Different companies have their own
schemes. There are no standards. I believe that there
should be a set of standards which organizations and
individuals who want to publish the Quran using
computer technology can rely on regardless of which
company they are working with.

God willing a project could be initiated which aims to
specify a set of standard guidelines and examples of
encoding the Quran in computer format. Then font
manufacturers, publishing software manufacturers and
other companies can compete in the area of providing
publishing services such as fonts, publishing
software, etc. to organizations and individuals who
want to publish the Quran. This is a common scenario
for many software applications: The specifications are
standard and openly available, while companies compete
in the implementation of the standards.

Would you, Munzir and Adil, be interested in such a
standardization effort?

Best Regards,
Mete

--- Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at myrealbox dot com> wrote:
> 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
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