Computer Software for Urdu - II
Prof Bruce R. Pray has written on Urdu softwares in a recent Newsletter of the American Pakistan Research Organization. Below we print his comments on some of the programs now available. Interested people may contact him at: Dept of South and Southeast Asian Studies; 1203 Dwindle Hall; University of California; Berkeley, CA 94720.
1. "Multi-Lingual Scholar," Gamma Productions, Inc., 710 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 609; Santa Monica, CA 90401. Tel. (213) 394-8622. This is a word processing program with extensive multilingual capabilities for the IBM and IBM-compatible computers. The Arabic/Persian package has now been adapted for Urdu. . . . [See Muzaffar Iqbal's detailed comments on the following page.]
2. Linguist's Software, Inc., Box 580; Edmonds, WA 98020. Tel. (206) 775-1130. For the Macintosh Linguist's Software carries an impressive number of fonts in other languages, as well as all imaginable diacritics for Roman fonts. This firm has both dot-matrix and laser fonts- for Arabic, Persian and Urdu. There are at present four PostScript laser fonts, which come with Arabic System 6.0.3, providing bidirectional word processing, automatic contextualization and ligature formation, and vowel overstrikes. The program disk includes Gregorian and lunar calendars.
3. Ecological Linguistics; P.O. Box 15156; Washington, D.C. 20003. This firm carries a very large variety of fonts for the Macintosh for alphabets diverse as Amharic and Korean. Three Arabic laser fonts are available, using Apple's Arabic Script Manager, with the additional letters needed for Persian and Urdu..
Elsewhere we reproduce information concerning two packages of hard-and softwares developed in Pakistan. "Nasta'liq-e Nizami" is sold by Pakistan Data Management Services; 87 Darul Aman Cooperative Housing Society;
Karachi-5. "Surkhab Publishing System" is available from Inaam Alvi Computers, Pvt., Ltd; 3rd Floor, Syedda Chambers;0pp. Masjid Bait-ul-Mukarram; Main University Road; Gulshan-e-Iqbal; Karachi. The latter also have an address in New York: 15-46 Parsons Blvd.; White Stone, Queens, NY 11357. Tel. (718) 767-1550. Both are expensive and seem best suited for commercial purposes.
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