Urdu as interface design language — A novel approach

Abstract

After several years of research in English and other European languages for interface designing both in desktop and web applications, it has also become a popular domain of research in Urdu language. Unfortunately languages like Urdu have gained a reduced amount of consideration in this regard. In this paper we present a technique for designing an interface initially for desktop application e.g databases. We use ASCII codes for mapping the keystrokes to the Urdu character's images using the well known Phonetic keyboard styles. Initially we create three fonts (e.g CheeChest, MUM1, NooriNastaliq33) for this purpose, and the Urdu characters contained in these fonts are mapped through ASCII codes. On the other hand characters can be mapped to any type of desktop application control (e.g textbox, combo box etc.) for writing Urdu words and further can get access to any database. Since all these activities are performed in runtime, the database stores the characters in original English language in back end. The paper is based on the main and ever-demanded requirement of software furnished with Urdu interface. This paper also presents a literature with new goal that researchers can look these techniques for further development using more advance techniques.