Wednesday, September 21, 2005

"Installing Urdu" on Windows XP

This blogger, in particular, has made a lot of noise about blogging in Urdu and I promised instructions on how to install Urdu as a language that your Windows XP machine can handle. Here are the instructions, from the website of the Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing in Pakistan:

http://www.crulp.org/Downloads/read_me_xp.txt

Once you have followed those instructions, you can use Urdu not just for blogging, but for pretty much anything you now use English and the English script for on your computer. And as I have said before, no, it is not the same as using InPage or some other editor to write Urdu, but using Urdu all the time. With the InPage solution (which is wonderful for "kitaabath" and page layout), what you have to do is convert your text in to a graphic and put it on your website or page, etc. But with this procedure, you can actually write directly in your HTML file, or Word document--or even while chatting with people over Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger or other IM client!

آدابAdaab,
فقیر-iiFaqeer

5 comments:

Qais Mujeeb said...

That's wonderful ! Sabahat bhai

Is there a limitation of necessarily having Windows XP on the machine, in order to install it?

iFaqeer said...

Actually, yes and no; but mostly no, for now.

The procedure is written specifically for XP. However, the underlying technological fact is that Unicode, the system of showing different types of scripts on computers has now been expanded so that it supports a lot more scripts. What that means is that once you write something using this kind of thing, anyone can read it on the newer versions of other operating systems as well. I can see them very well on my Apple Macintosh computer, for example. However, this does not extend to older versions of Windows. At least not in a way that is predictable, and at least not by me.

The bigger problem, for now, is that the keyboard software/driver that those instructions refer to (developed by CRULP) is only available for XP and Linux. But not (yet) for Macintoshs or others. I have been meaning to start a conversation with them and others to see if we can port it to the Mac.

That's what I know for now. Please do explore further--and let me know if you find anything new.

Manzoor Khan said...

Sabahat bhai, I am not able to download the TXT file. Can we have the file uploaded in some public domain like Rapidshare, etc? How do I get to the file?

urdudaaN said...

I was disappointed when I saw the incorrect couplet(sher) image at the top.
Urdu hai jis ka naam "ham" ???? jaante ...

It is sad to note that accuracy is only when it comes to English, and is a non-no or let-go when Urdu is concerned?

Anyway, pls find some time and visit urdudaan.blogspot.com

urdudaaN said...

I found a link to Early Urdu by Shamsur rahman faruqi from this blog. Thanks for the same.