Re: Encoding the Holy Koran into Unicode

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Salaam Adil,

I understand your situation in the Middle East among
software companies which are trying to destroy each
other. Unfortunately greed makes people do things that
are contrary to God's teachings. I fully support your
suggestion to form a foundation to define standards
for the encoding of the Quran. We could collaborate to
form a standardization body that would have very tight
relations with the Unicode Consortium, or could even
be part of it if that is possible at all.

You said you already proposed joint projects to other
companies in the Middle East. Have you contacted
Tradigital? They also have very sophisticated Quranic
font technology. I saw a sample PDF of their work and
I was very impressed! They are willing to work on
joint projects with other software companies in the
field and "will study any kind of business/technical
proposal that would be seen by their shareholders as
beneficial to the venture". Thomas Milo from DecoType
is also willing to work on a joint project. In fact so
far I have found out these companies listed below are
willing to work on a joint project, but yet aren't
organized in that manner:

Diwan (as you mentioned in your email)
Tradigital (www.tradigital.de)
DecoType (Thomas Milo)
Liwal Ltd Products and Services (www.liwal.com)

Would you be willing to consider a joint project with
Tradigital?

Best Regards,
Mete

--- Adil Allawi <adil at diwan dot com> wrote:
> Salaam Mete,
> 
> I have approached this issue from exactly the same
> perspective. There should be a set of standards for
> Quran on computers and that this would form the
> basis for which all companies would build their own
> solutions. This is why Diwan approached the subject
> from the point of view of using a pure Unicode
> encoding and encoding the actual characters rather
> than the visual forms. I have donated some eight
> years of Diwan's best R&D time into this effort.
> 
> I would love to work on such a joint project and I
> have proposed joint efforts to other companies. And
> for the past few years Diwan presents its best ideas
> to the industry at Gitex in Dubai. My conclusion is
> that there are too many managers of software
> companies in the Middle East who refuse to cooperate
> with others. At best they want the whole project for
> themselves and at worst they would prefer to
> "borrow" the best ideas of others and claim them for
> their own. In the US the big competing companies
> will share their ideas and if one company does use
> the ideas of another, it pays for the rights. In the
> Middle East software companies try to destroy each
> other. In this atmosphere you will not get many
> companies to cooperate and if Diwan openly publishes
> its best ideas it will only see others claiming
> credit for this work.
> 
> My only feeling is that if a foundation can be
> created to define such a standard and this can gain
> proper funding and support from industry and
> government standards bodies, then Diwan would be
> pleased to be partner of this. I think this is
> possible. Diwan has got positive reactions from big
> companies such as Sun and Microsoft and Dubai
> Internet City. But there is not yet enough momentum
> behind the idea to get these organisations involved
> and more companies interested. I think this is where
> our joint efforts can make a difference.
> 
> In the meantime I will work in whatever way I can -
> I will publish my recommendations for the Unicode
> standard when my time allows and I will be happy to
> share this with the open source community at that
> time.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Adil
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Adil
> 
> At 4:29 pm +0100 8/4/03, Mete Kural wrote:
> >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
> 
> -- 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Adil Allawi
> Technical Director   Diwan Software Ltd
> _______________________________________________
> Developer mailing list
> Developer at arabeyes dot org
> http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/developer