اردوویب بلاگ

I released UrduEditor some time ago. Unfortunately it does not work on Windows 98. I did not realize at that time that right-to-left support needs to be installed in order for UrduEditor to work properly and this support is not available for Windows 98. Luckily I got a solution in my mind, which in fact is more of a hack, but it is still effective. Remember Urdu Webpad. It also works under Windows 98. Well, you need to have at least Internet Explorer 6 installed for it to work.

I then remembered that MFC also contains a CHTMLView class which is just a wrapper on Internet Explorer’s object model. It is capable of showing a html-page containing Urdu Webpad. This html-page loaded inside the application provides almost the same editing features as UrduEditor. Saving and loading Urdu text then requires accessing the contents of the Urdu Webpad control through the object model of Internet Explorer.

I call this application UrduEditor Lite since it provides a subset of the features available in UrduEditor. It is compiled using the Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 98 systems (MSLU). This way the same application runs equally well both on Windows 98 as well as on Windows XP systems. The file unicows.dll needs to be in the application path in order for it to function properly in Windows 98. This program is useful for those who want to stick to their Windows 98 systems. Those Windows XP users who are too lazy to install support for Urdu language on their systems may also find it interesting.

Following are the UrduEditor features missing in UrduEditor Lite:

1. Customized Find and Replace dialog boxes
2. Urdu email client

Following is needed for the proper functioning of UrduEditor Lite:

1. Internet Explorer 6
2. Urdu Naskh Asiatype font
3. On Windows 98 the unicows.dll file in application’s path. This is included in the download.

UrduEditor Lite can still save Urdu text as html. The missing features are not really impossible to program. I had some problems in compiling the CPJNSMTPConnection-class with UrduEditor Lite on Windows 98 and therefore I left out the email client functionality. This class implements the SMTP-protocol. It may work after some minor modifications. I may think about incorporating it into UrduEditor Lite if there is enough demand.

Creating a wrapper around Urdu Webpad adds an interesting perspective to the further development of the UrduEditor Lite application. Now only the JavaScript or html-modules can be updated to augment the functionality of UrduEditor Lite. The html-page that gets loaded inside UrduEditor Lite is Editor.htm. You can freely customize it to your taste e.g. by adding a background image. I have also made use of the Urdu keyboard available with Urdu Webpad in Editor.htm. This on-screen keyboard keyboard can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on the button as shown in the following figure. You can make as many modifications to the Editor.htm file as long as you do not change the file name. Another requirement is that thid html-page should contain a textarea-element whose identifier attribute is “Editor”.

The Urdu Webpad included with UrduEditor Lite contains some updates from Asif. There are some minor bug fixes and now the buttons on-screen keyboard show tool tips. You only need to unpack the zip-file containing UrduEditor Lite application in a folder and it is ready for use. No extra steps need to be performed for its installation. I have tested UrduEditor Lite on Windows XP as well as on Windows 98. I do not have a separate installation of Windows 98. I ran Windows 98 inside a virtual machine. I used VMWare for this purpose.

I am releasing UrduEditor Lite again under GPL. Have fun!

Updated location:
Download UrduEditor Lite with source code

Since there is some confusion on how Urdu Planet works, here is an attempt at clarification.

Urdu Planet is based on the Planet software. Basically, a script is run every 6 hours (at 12am, 6am, 12pm, 6pm US Eastern Time) which looks at the current Atom or RSS feeds of the blogs included in Urdu Planet. The Urdu Planet page then aggregates all the posts that have a date less than 7 days old at that time. In case there are more than 60 such posts, only the latest 60 posts are included on the Urdu Planet webpage. This means that if you post something at 6:05am US Eastern time, it won’t appear on Urdu Planet until noon.

Also, Urdu Planet does not store your blog posts other than what appears on the Urdu Planet page. Therefore, any changes to your blog posts are reflected at Urdu Planet on the next 6-hourly update.

There is an ongoing discussion about the choice of a back-end system for the proposed Urdu portal. I have been asserting the need of a content-management system (CMS) for the creation, integration and management of Urdu content. I have practically no prior practical experience of using a CMS. I have just done some web browsing to gather some information. Following is the minimum set of features that a CMS should support in order to be useful for the Urdu portal:

1. Support of layout templates
2. Interactive support for adding/removing sections
3. Online WYSIWYG editor for editing content
4. Customisable for displaying Urdu content
5. User registration
6. Integration of content such as Urdu Wiki, Urdu forum, member blogs etc.

The content-management systems Drupal, Mambo and Typo3 all have excellent support for these features. Further these CMSes also contain built in applications such as chat, eCommerce etc. One big problem with the above mentioned CMSes is the learning curve associated. Installing these CMSes is not very difficult. I installed Drupal and Typo3 without much problem but I did not go much beyond their default generated web sites.

I did not think about evaluating WordPress earlier because I always thought of it as a blogging platform, which probably is not completely true. People have actually been using WordPress in their content-management solutions. The overwhelming argument in favour of WordPress is the available know-how. There are already a number bloggers i.e Asif, Danial, Ejaz, KO etc. who have been using WordPress and are familiar with its intricacies. A lot depends on these fellows to give Urdu portal a head start with their knowledge of web technologies. The main page of a WP-based web site consists of posts, which is not exactly what we want in a portal. Again I would expect on my WP-expert friends to come up with a decent customisation of WP. Following articles advocate the use of WP as a CMS:

• Centripetal forces
• WordPress 1.5 as a Web Site CMS

I would also leave the issue of a more powerful CMS for the future. The content-management needs of the Urdu portal are surely going to get more demanding with time. A migration to some other CMS may be necessary by then. On the other hand WP is also under continuous development. It can also be hoped that it stays capable of managing the content of the Urdu portal.

Comparing the features of two or CMSes is not an easy task. There are dozens of factors/parameters that have to be considered in such a comparison. CMS Matrix is a web site that makes this comparison a lot easier. You just have to select the CMSes to be compared from the given list and it provides a side-by-side comparison of their features. I selected WordPress, Typo3, Mambo and Drupal for such a comparison. It could clearly be seen from the comparison that WP lags behind the other full-fledged systems in terms of content-management capabilities.

Another web site opensourceCMS provides information about the open source content-management systems. It also provides a CMS-rating which based upon the user’s votes.

Layout

A horizontal and a vertical menu bar should support the web site navigation. The content should be presented in the form of sections distributed in a two column layout. Following web sites/portals present such a layout:

• ہم سب دوست
• پہچان
• Small and medium enterprise development authority

I have deliberately chosen only the sites that use Unicode Urdu. Impelementing the proposed layout in WP would probably require a fair deal of CSS/HTML/PHP wizardry and I hope that our experienced friends will help us.

Font

I think we should, at this point, also debate the issue of which Urdu to use in the Urdu portal. Most of the Unicode Urdu-based web sites are using either Urdu Naskh Asiatype or Nafees Web Naskh font. I would vote for Urdu Naskh Asiatype. This font also works on Windows 98. Some people may think of tahoma. Personally, I do not like tahoma but that is only my opinion.

Content (or wish list)

The content of the Urdu portal will keep evolving just like its layout. I can think of the following content presented by the Urdu portal to begin with:

• Urdu Wiki containing technical resources about installing Urdu support and Urdu blogging etc.
• Urdu forum. This is going to be completely based on Unicode Urdu. I will gladly help Qadeer in setting up this forum
• Blog feed aggregator (Urdu planet). This should be left to Zack.
• News feed aggregator (for news from BBCUrdu.com etc.).
• Links to newspapers columns and editorials with their summaries
• Literary section
  • Book reviews
  • Interviews
  • Classics
  • Poetry
• Urdu chat

You are encouraged to supplement the above list. I have added a section to Urdu Wiki for the purpose of collecting ideas about the types of Urdu content to be incorporated.

And finally there are some very useful suggestions about creating an Urdu web site by Mr Amjad Sheikh.

Some Windows XP users have been having the problem with UrduEditor that it does not properly join words. The solution is to properly configure the support for right-to-left languages in Windows XP. This is done as follows: Open Control Panel, go to the Regional and Language options. There select the Languages tab and check both check boxes as shown in the following figure.

Application of these settings will properly configure the required right-to-left language support on Windows XP. You will need to have your Windows XP CD ready. The needed files will be copied from the CD and at the end it requires you to restart the system. Now you can properly use UrduEditor. I am still trying to make UrduEditor work on Windows 98. It was difficult enough to compile the sources on Windows 98. The latest distributions of Visual Studio 6.0 and Platform SDK do not support Windows 98. I had to strip UrduEditor of the email functionality. Although it now compiles, it still does not yield the desirable results. I do not know how to enable support of right-to-left languages in Windows 98. I will thankful if somebody could guide me in this regard.

While the voting goes on about the domain name, let us consider the tasks we need to do once the domain is available.

The following sites need to be moved to the new domain:

1. This blog, Urdu Blogging: We need to switch the blog to Wordpress. Asif, can we use Wordpress 1.5 or should we stick to 1.2 for now?
2. Urdu blogs webring: In addition to moving the home page of the webring, I also want to switch it to some php/MySQL-based solution instead of Ringsurf.
3. Urdu Planet: This should be simple to move.
4. Urdu Wiki: Asif, we need to coordinate on that.
5. Urdu Freeware: In addition to Nabeel’s WebEditor and UrduEditor, is there anything else? What about Blogger, Wordpress and Movable Type templates optimized for Urdu blogs? Also, Qadeer, how about putting up the Urdu translation of phpBB here too? Does anyone want to set up a mirror to this?

In addition to moving these to their new locations, we need to do it in a way that we don’t break existing links. So forwarding of each page (and not just the main page) needs to be properly set up at the same time. I would hope that this forwarding would stay up for at least a few months. However, the forwarding/redirect should not be completely transparent to the visitor as we want the visitor to know that the page has moved so that (s)he can update her/his bookmarks. The META Refresh tag seems appropriate for the purpose. The .htaccess Redirect also might work.

If possible, it might also be a good idea to search for links to these items and inform the owners of those websites where the links are that our sites have moved.

In addition to all the moves, I would also like to setup an Urdu forum. Qadeer, can you please help us there? Guys, any ideas of the design of forum topics?

We would also need to maintain the main site as well as other static pages. A CMS would be really useful. Nabeel mentioned a few:

1. Mambo
2. Drupal
3. Typo3

I have heard only of Drupal and that seemed too complicated to me. Also, we have to consider how much modification any of these would need to generate Urdu or bilingual pages. Are there any other CMSes out there that could be useful? If a CMS is too much work right now, how about using Wordpress or other blog software to generate static pages as well?

Among ideas for the future, how about setting up an RSS aggregation of other Unicode Urdu websites (news etc.)? Any other ideas?

Now comes the question of responsibility. Setting all of this up and maintaining it is going to require at least a few people. Therefore, please let me know if you are interested (I am looking at you, Asif, Danial and Nabeel and others too!) I’ll setup shell access accounts for everyone involved. Then we have to coordinate about who is doing what and who maintains what.