Re: Message for Abdulaziz (alarfaj) - Link to www.unifiedarabicalphabet.com?

[Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj <aalarfaj at gmail dot com>]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 12:01:20 -0600, Camille K. Hedrick - UAAF
<uaaf at comcast dot net> wrote:
>  
> Dear Abdulaziz: 
>   
> I found your Web site as I was conducting a search for "Unified Arabic" and
> "Nasri Khattar" on Google.  I have begun to pick up the loose ends of my
> father's work on Unified Arabic--he passed away in Lebanon in 1998.  

I read the biography. Your father worked for Aramco. So did mine :-)
(he's retired now)

> I now have a small Web site, www.unifiedarabicalphabet.com that I will soon
> be populating with additional information.  I am also attaching two
> documents, a biography for my father, as well as a backgrounder on Unified
> Arabic. 
>   
> I would be very happy if you could add a link from your site to this Web
> site, called "Unified Arabic," under "Related Sites."  Please let me know
> what you think of my request. 

Hmmm. The related sites section is not supposed to be a comprehensive
directory of every Arabization-related website out there, but is
merely to provide examples, like say, a LUG from each Arabic-speaking
country. But this is a non-issue, there are much better ways we can
cooperate I hope.

The Arabeyes stance has more or less already been expressed in the
thread you saw[0]. We (well some of us really...) are strongly for a
Unified Arabic Alphabet, but as an option, not as a replacement for
cursive Arabic. The classical cursive Arabic simply cannot be done
away with, and we believe in this now much more than we did back in
2002 which is when that thread was started.

The reason for this is simple. Back then algorithms to implement
classical Arabic writing were poor/non-existent. Now, we can/do write
and read Arabic all the time on open source systems all the time, in
cursive, complete with diactrics/ligatures, and its truly a breeze.
The technology has in fact come a long way since then.

This does not mean a UAA would not be useful. It will in fact be
extremely useful for the purpose of acronyms, as your website
mentions. But, how should UAA be implemented? Should it be implemented
as a font, whose glyphs simply are not joined, or should UAA
characters actually have their own internal encodings seperate from
the encodings of joinable characters? To put it simply, with the first
option the machine itself will not be able to see the difference
between a UAA character and a regular character, but with the second
option it will indeed be aware that they are different.

<personal opinion> The second option will mean that UAA will be
useable side-by-side with the regular characters we use now on the
same document, even if that document is plain-text. You might even be
able to consider them as "Capital Case Arabic Letters ". However, I
think the second option will indeed meet resistance from many,
including the Unicode organization. Also, technical problems will
invariable arise from this option as well (searching will be
harder...)</personal opinion>

Either of these options will be something to benefit from. Do please
try to publish/organize/further develop more of Mr. Khattar's work,
and put that information on the website please. [1]

> Would you suggest that I join one of your mailing lists/discussion groups? 
> If so, which one(s)?

Indeed I do. The Announce list[2], which is extremely low-traffic, and
the General list[3], which is medium-traffic. I'm CCing the General
list with this reply, in fact.

I wish to apologize for this late reply, and also thank you for the
work your putting together. I do hope we will be hearing from you
frequently on our mailing lists.

Regards,

Abdulaziz,

P.S. I prefer plain-text attachements to Microsoft Words attachements.
Most of us here do not even have MS Word on their computers :-) . Do
please try to use alternatives to MS Word documents where ever you
can.

P.P.S. Our wiki[4] portion of the website is currently down, but once
its up again your welcome to create a page there explaining about your
project. I think that would serve your purpose much better than a link
on our related sites section :-)

References:
[0] http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/general/2002/January/msg00027.html
[1] http://www.unifiedarabicalphabet.com
[2] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/announce
[3] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general
[4] http://wiki.arabeyes.org