Link to www.unifiedarabicalphabet.com?

[Lemine Abdallahi <lemine dot abdallahi at wanadoo dot fr>]

Hi all,

I think it is an excellent idea for this project to have a global view of
the already-proposed simplifications/improvements to the "standard" arabic 
script. This is an implementation-independent issue which will always be
useful. 

This project ( www.unifiedarabicalphabet.com ) clearly lies in this
setting. I am **very** interested by having more info on this.

I just wanted to mention an excellent review of some of these
simplifications made some time ago by Mr. Yannis Haralambous which
contains a historical introduction and a technical/typographical study.

See his web page http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/, the specific article is :

# ?Simplification of the Arabic Script: Two Different Approaches and their
# Implementations?, dans Electronic Publishing, Artistic Imaging, and
# Digital Typography, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1375,
# 1998, pp. 138-156.

downloadable on the same page : http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/pdf/arabic-simpli98.pdf

Lemine Abdallahi,




On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 04:28:50AM +0200, Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj wrote:
> 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

> _______________________________________________
> General mailing list
> General at arabeyes dot org
> http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general