Correction (Important) Encoding the Holy Koran into Unicode

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

In my email I said:

"In "laayat", one could choose to encode
the hamza there with U+0621 or U+0654 and design their
font accordingly because it looks like a hamza above,
while the proper encoding should be U+0654."

I meant to say "..while the proper encoding should be
U+0621" here. Please replace U+0654 with U+0621 when
you read this sentence. Sorry.

Mete

--- Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com> wrote:
> Salaamun Aleykum,
> 
> I was obviously not clear on what I wanted to say
> :-)
> It's my lack of better words. May God forgive me.
> When
> I said "there are no standards" I really didn't mean
> to say that there were no standards being utilized
> at
> all. Unicode and OpenType are obvious base standards
> that these companies/organizations use. What I
> really
> wanted to say was that since Unicode is missing a
> couple of codepoints to make it possible to encode
> the
> whole Quran properly in Unicode, these
> companies/organizations also use their own
> proprietary
> codepoints, although they use Unicode codepoints
> whenever possible. And this is done in a
> non-standard
> way. It would be great if we could gather a group of
> companies/organizations/individuals who are
> committed
> to making the necessary additions to Unicode and
> finally make this process standardized so that font
> manufacturers do not need to "tweak" Unicode in
> their
> own way in order to encode the Quran.
> 
> There are also several other cases where there is a
> bit of non-standard activity. Sometimes it looks
> like
> there is more than one codepoint in Unicode that you
> can encode a letter with in the Quran. Two good
> examples are "laayat" in verse 2:248 and "asaoow" in
> verse 30:10. In "laayat", one could choose to encode
> the hamza there with U+0621 or U+0654 and design
> their
> font accordingly because it looks like a hamza
> above,
> while the proper encoding should be U+0654. The same
> also for the hamza in asaoow in 30:10; in this word
> the hamza is on top of the U+0640 tatweel, so some
> may
> prefer to encode this as U+0654 (hamza above) while
> this is no different than any other hamza that is
> encoded as U+0621 (regular hamza). The Unicode
> Consortium has to impose these encoding standards
> which they do not do at the moment.
> 
> We can come together to push these standards into
> Unicode Arabic by influencing the Unicode Consortium
> to make the necessary additions to Unicode.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Mete
> 
> --- Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at myrealbox dot com> wrote:
> > > Salaamun Aleykum Munzir, Adil and others,
> > Wa Alaikum Assalaam
> > 
> > > 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
> > If I told you I've understood a single word, I
> will
> > be lying to you ;-)
> > Please, Mete, I need more clarification of what
> type
> > of standard do we lack. 
> > Give a quick draft.
> > 
> > Diwan used Unicode, OpenType, Java which are all
> > widely accepted `standards' 
> > but they found these not enough and they tried to
> > patch these creatures to do 
> > the job. It's much better than to make their own
> > flavor of an encoding system 
> > or font encoding or adding D++ language ;-)
> > 
> > If we need some standardization it's in the area
> of
> > pushing the Unicode 
> > Consortium to accept the proposals by Mr Adil,
> > Roozbeh, Behdad and the 
> > others. Instead of wasting their time considering
> > adding a heart or spade 
> > dots over and under letters, Quran ligatures and
> > characters need more 
> > consideration.
> > 
> > -- 
> > 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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