PAN ASIA ICT R&D Grants Programme - UTM

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6. 6. Character-Based Character-Based Nastalique Nastalique Font ont f ffor f or Ur Urdu Ur du (P (Pakistan) (P akistan) Project Budget Grant Awarded: US$ 29,833 Supplementary <strong>Grants</strong> Implementing organization contributed US$ 22,833. Project Purpose Create a character-based Nastalique font for Urdu so that Urdu web and other publishing more effective and efficient. Project Objectives Enable the realization of contextsensitive writing systems like Urdu Nastalique through extending the existing Open-Type Font formalism. Develop a Nastalique font for Urdu, which requires a scientific study of Nastalique orthography, and then its modeling using OTF specification. Target Audience Definition and free disbursement of the Nastalique font for Urdu will accelerate Urdu publishing through electronic media and will benefit the 60 million readers of Urdu across the world. People who do not understand a second language (e.g. English, which is the lingua franca of computers and internet) will also be able to publish and access web pages, email, chat, etc., and a host of other computer applications. Nafees Nastalique Project Output Self-extracting installation program that installs Nafees Nastalique Hardware & Software Two workstations High resolution scanner Laser printer Adobe Photoshop 6.0 ScanFont FontLab. Jamil-ur-Rehman in deep thinking during a calligraphy session Publications on the lexicon and rule base developed for Nastalique and modeling techniques employed for the realization of Nafees Nastalique. Sample web-site creation and publication using the Nafees Nastalique. The Project Team The team from CRULP includes Dr. Sarmad Hussain as Senior Research Fellow, Mr. Shafiq-ur Rahman, Mr. Belal Muhammad Hashmi, seven funded students, and calligraphers. Contact Address Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, 852 B Block, Faisal Town, Lahore, Pakistan. E-Mail: sarmad.hussain@nu.edu.pk Websites: http://www.crulp.org/ http://www.calligraphyislamic.com/ profiles/nafees.html www.crulp.org/ 28
Open-T Open-Type Open-T ype F FFont F ont Specif Specifica Specif ica ications ica tions f ffor f or Ur Urdu Ur du Langua Language Langua The team, left to right: Mr. Jamil, Mr. Atif and the team lead Mr. Aamir (missing: Sara Hussain, Noman Nazar, and two undergraduate internees) Urdu is the national language of Pakistan, and more than 60 million people in more than 20 countries speak the language. Even with such extensive readership, very limited information is published on the Internet in Urdu. The absence of a character-based font for Urdu significantly limits the use of Urdu. . Urdu is written in Nasta’leeq script. This script is contextsensitive and cannot be constructed using earlier font specifications. Therefore, Urdu websites are made using Naskh font, which is normally used for Arabic and unnatural for Urdu readership, or alternatively the websites contain scanned images of text written in Nasta’leeq, which takes a large amount of memory and makes the websites very slow to access. Therefore, to make Urdu web and other publishing more efficient, a character-based Nasta’leeq font for Urdu needed to be developed. 29 Project Background The Nasta’leeq script Urdu is written in, is complex and has very context-sensitive structure. The project team addressed the major problem of modeling the character based Nasta’leeq font for Urdu. To solve this problem, the team needed to quantitatively analysis Nasta’leeq rules, including proper contextual substitution of shapes, cursive positioning and correct Nuqta placement. This project presents a scientific study of Nasta’leeq orthography and models the script using Open Type Font (OTF) specifications. This project produced the model of these rules in the form of character based Nasta’leeq font for Urdu. The major research findings include: capturing the context sensitive substitution grammar of Nasta’leeq; formulating the cursive positioning rules of the font; deriving optimized Nuqtaplacement rules; and implementing kerning rules where necessary. These findings have also been documented in a logical and physical model of Nafees Nasta’leeq. With the completion of this project, the dissemination of information in the Urdu language through electronic media is now easy.. Users can now publish electronically in Urdu and thus reach out to the extensive readership around the world. Furthermore, through various documents as specified above, this project has quantified Nasta’leeq rulesin significant detail and analyzed methods for modeling and rendering complex fonts. Project Method The project used domain understanding and literature review to understand previous work in this field. First, the project team studied technologies and standards defined for font develop- Urdu letters in Nastaliq Script2 ment. Then, the team gathered and tested previously available Urdu fonts and applications supporting Urdu. After the team collected information and requirements from the calligraphers, the team developed a prototype. An OpenType font for Naskh was developed as a prototype. Naskh is a particular writing style of Urdu with simpler substitution and positioning rules than the Nasta’leeq writing style. The development life cycle of the Naskh prototype was shorter though similar to that of Nasta’leeq. Nafees Nastalique
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Page 39 and 40: with the customized SCALA computer
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Page 43 and 44: in the delivery of distance educati
Page 45 and 46: How to apply for grants Information
Page 47: Published for the PanAsia ICT R&D G

PAN ASIA ICT R&D Grants Programme - UTM

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