Urdu language

Urdu is a language of India and Pakistan very similar to Hindi, except that it uses Muslim rather than Hindu religious vocabulary, and is written in the Arabic alphabet rather than Devanagari.

• The Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan is developing a Linux distribution in Urdu.
• Ubuntu Linux has been localized into Urdu.
• Urdu internationalization utilities. Three utilities: Inpage converter, typing tutor and collating/search will be made available initially.
• Urdu Font Project, a step towards Opensource development of True Type Unicode Standard based Urdu Fonts specially "Nastaleeq", "Nastaleeq" Like and "Naskh" fonts.
• Urdu Indic Initiative is the F/LOSS-based localization (l10n) Initiative for Urdu as spoken in the Indian sub-continent. We are working towards a localized GNOME/KDE, Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org for ur_IN based on the Unicode Standard and associated technologies.
• Urdu Bulletin Board is a Mozilla-Firefox Plugin which enables Urdu Typing/Rendering for HTML Pages.
• RabtPad is a configurable unicode and Java based text editor for arabic based scripts including Urdu and Farsi with virtual keyboard for non-Latin scripts on Latin-based systems, export to pdf, rtf, html and plain text (later xml).
• PyUrduEdit is a simple text editor for the Urdu language.
• Urdu phpBB is an Urdu adaptation of the phpBB forum software complete with langauge translation and an online Urdu editor.
• Urdu OCR SDK is in progress. It is an SDK for offline Urdu character recognition.
• Urdu Localization Project

Dear Linux Pakistan and Ubuntu Linux Community

It gives us great pleasure to announce an accomplishment of the Ubuntu
Pakistan Team Urdu-l10n International Translation Team (Noumaan Yaqoob, Team
Lead) for localizing and including the new "language-pack-gnome-ur 1.6.06+2
Pack" in the latest Ubuntu Linux version 6.10 global distribution giving
support for Urdu at installation. The latest version comes with an
installable Urdu Pack by default and is also available when you upgrade your
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS version to Ubuntu 6.10. We encourage you to test the new
features and report them to Noumaan at
noumaan{at no spam}ubuntu-pk{dot}org

I must point out here that the Ubuntu Pakistan Team members Noumaan and his
Team have done an excellent job by creating and contributing Pakistan's
first public Urdu Word Bank and Dictionary accessible at
http://l10n.urduweb.org/dictionary as well as translating the latest
versions of Gnome Interface into Urdu. This marks a whole new avenue and era
of localized Urdu computing not only for Pakistan but for the whole Urdu
Speaking Linux Users Community worldwide.

Also it is important to note here that Saadat Saeed (Ubuntu Pakistan Team
Member) has also made an excellent contribution by introducing the first
Ubuntu Linux Urdu Editor "PyUrduEdit" that will further accelerate further
community translation efforts. The Urdu Editor project is accessible at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pyurduedit.

Waqas Toor, Team Lead Localized Documentation Team is shortly introducing
the Ubuntu Desktop and Server Guides in Urdu that will also be available in
the future versions of Ubuntu Distributions as default availability. You may
contact Waqas at waqas{at no spam}ubuntu-pk.org

I congratulate all the Linux communities, Noumaan, Waqas, Saadat including
their team members and the Pakistan IT community that today we have an
alternate and free-of-cost long term community supported Linux Operating
System in Urdu! (A solution to combat software piracy)

We are now gearing up for Sindhi and Punjabi Translations so all of you
interested volunteers out there, join the Ubuntu Pakistan Team that has over
40 volunteer developers and contributors with localization efforts going on
at:

Register at:

https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-pk (Ubuntu Pakistan Team)

https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-l10n-ur (Ubuntu Urdu l10n Team)

And subscribe to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-l10n-urd

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-pk

And participate in translation services at:

Urdu:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/edgy/+lang/ur

Sindhi:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/edgy/+lang/sd

On a separate note, Open Office 2.0+ is already available with Urdu Support
done by our neighboring country but that has to be added as a separate
language pack.

A gift to Pakistan by the Ubuntu Community on the occasion of Eid. Ubuntu
Rocks in Pakistan!

Best Regards
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
Team Leader
Ubuntu-Linux Pakistan LoCo Team
Cell: 92-333-4661290
Tel: 92-42-5030039
E-Mail: bajwa@ubuntu.com
URL: www.ubuntu-pk.org
Mailing List: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-pk