Grant Amount: US$ 29,833

Keywords: LOCALIZATION, OPEN TYPE FONTS, URDU, PAKISTAN

Geographic coverage: Pakistan; Global

Objectives

The objective of this project is to develop a Nastalique font for Urdu.

Research context

Urdu is written in Nastalique script, which is cursive and has a complex and context-sensitive structure. Its application for computers and the Internet have been limited by a lack of quantitative detail on its rules and the mathematical inability of traditional fonts such as True Type to model its complexity. Recent advances in font technology such as Open Type Font (OTF) now enable the modeling of complex scripts like Nastalique. This project performed a quantitative analysis of Nastalique rules and modeled them using OTF. The project results provide the facility for users to disseminate information in Urdu language through electronic media. As OTF is a formal standard, no specialized software is required to read and render this font.

Target beneficiaries

Definition and free disbursement of Nastalique font for Urdu accelerates Urdu publishing through electronic media and benefits the 60 million readers of Urdu across the world. In this group, those who do not understand a second language (e.g. English) are able to publish and access web pages, email, chat and a variety of other computer applications.

Outputs

The output of this project is a character-based Nastalique font for Urdu. The project also produced research papers quantifying Nastalique rules with significant detail and analysed methods for modeling and rendering complex fonts.

Research results and outcomes

In its effort to model a Nastalique font the project sought to understand the fonts’ underlying principles, including the calligrapher’s intuition. Through a series of lectures on Nastalique, in-depth discussions with calligraphers and the analysis of handwritten books, the project matured its perception of Nastalique’s inherent architecture and enhanced the knowledge base of its writing style. At the end of this research, the project succeeded in consolidating Nastalique and producing its logical model. Major research findings include: capturing context-sensitive substitution grammar of Nastalique, formulating its cursive positioning rules, deriving optimized Nuqta (marks on alphabet) placement rules and implemented kerning rules where necessary. These findings also have the benefit of preserving the rich cultural heritage of Nastalique calligraphy.

Towards the end of its effort, the project faced unexpected limitations in OTF specifications. Within these limitations the project sought the optimal solutions. The project work tested existing OTF technology for font development, identified its limitations (with reference to Nastalique font) and indicated areas where enhancements are needed. The project team notes that the OTF font model is now being extended, allowing greater capacity to realize more complex fonts such as Nastalique. Regardless of this, the project met its objectives and target outputs and the Nafees Nastalique font was released. This font is freely downloadable at http://www.crulp.org.

The project team credits the hard work of students at the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) and the calligraphers who worked with a great deal of understanding and patience with the team of computer scientists. The project built capacity at CRULP to develop fonts and this capacity is now being shared with other organizations. The project has enabled CRULP to develop a partnership with PAN Localization, Microsoft’s Language Interface Pack for Urdu (http://www.PANL10n.net). CRULP also won a grant from Government of Pakistan to develop a software system for machine translation.

The results have provided 60 million Urdu users with an essential tool to develop and publish web pages as well as to access Urdu content on the Internet. On project completion, the project team felt that the overall impact of the project could not be fully realized without a significant outreach programme to train the end-users across the country. Since that time however, over 25,000 downloads of the font have been made from the project website, indicating that a significant number of people are using the font for development of Urdu documents online in standard Unicode format.

An additional issue that came up was whether it is in the best interest of the font to be free and open source as required by the grant. The main issue is that the font can be freely manipulated and if this is done poorly, its aesthetic and functional properties could be degraded. Also related to this matter are the commercialization opportunities inherent in the development of such products. For example, the project was contacted by BBC UK who wanted to purchase rights for the font so that they could modify it for the BBC Urdu website. The project team recommends that administering agencies should look into advising and guiding their partners in relevant intellectual property rights issues and making the agreement more detailed in this area.

Duration

Start Date: March 2002
End Date: August 2003
Total Duration: 18 Months

Contact information

Dr. Sarmad Hussain
Senior Research Fellow
National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences
852B Block, Faisal Town, Lahore, Pakistan
Email: sarmad.hussain@nu.edu.pk

Websites

http://www.nu.edu.pk
http://www.crulp.org

Reference website

http://www.PANL10n.net