In 2003, a technical committee consisting of highly qualified professionals was set to take care of the computerization work of the Qur’anic script. Members of this committee, among others, include the Vice Chancellor of Sudan University of Science and Technology and the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of the International University of Africa.
At its meeting, the committee decided the necessary requirements of the computerization work as well as produced two different schemes for the work. While the computerization committee adopted one of the schemes, upon which the work is based now, the university on its own part, made available both human and other required material resources for the job.
Stages of the Computerization Work
The implementation of the computerization plan has gone through a number of stages. These include:
-
Preparation:
at this stage, an Arabic character commonly used in computer was selected. This was naskh inscription (simplified Arabic) with its 3 models; regular, bold and italic. Being successful on this, three other types of inscriptions were introduced. These are kufi, thuluth and raq’a.
-
Designing the Inscriptions:
At this stage, the unit decided to employ the service of the expert who designed different types of Arabic inscriptions for a number of multinational software companies such as: the popular Microsoft and Apple. The expert designed the inscriptions as standardized by ISESCO and gave it the copyright name Africa. The designed inscriptions include all the specially invented letters to cover the specific phonological needs of the African languages, as well as the eight special vowels. Funded by the International University of Africa, there is no gain saying that the copyright of Africa remains the property of the Unit for Writing Languages with Quranic Script.
-
Designing the Key Board:
Designing a key board that is compatible with Microsoft Widows required from the unit the cost of travelling to USA and buying a number of computer programs. They are Font lab 4.0, Key Man Developer 5.0 and Fontographer. With that, the unit has been able to design a compatible computer board for the standardized scrip.
-
Experiment:
The experiment started with Hausa language. Having successfully produced a reasonably large size of Hausa text with that key board, the center made the next move by entering the letters of the remaining languages as standardized by ISESCO.
-
Establishing Qur’anic Script Computer Lab:
In 2005, the university initiated a 13-computer laboratory in the unit. Ever since, the unit embarked on a nonstop training for batch after another.
|