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Printing Arabic text using dot matrix printers
Author(s) -
Khayat M. G.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380160207
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , computer science , dot matrix , set (abstract data type) , character encoding , font , word (group theory) , firmware , matrix (chemical analysis) , optical character recognition , arabic , process (computing) , typeface , software , natural language processing , engineering drawing , artificial intelligence , computer graphics (images) , image (mathematics) , linguistics , programming language , computer hardware , mathematics , engineering , geometry , philosophy , materials science , composite material , operating system
The increased use of Arabic in computer systems makes it necessary to consider the effects of using Arabic script for input and output. Printing Arabic text using dot matrix printers requires special software or firmware. First, character shapes must be developed and loaded into the printer's memory. Secondly, since an Arabic letter can have up to four different shapes depending on its position in the word, a program must be developed to determine which shape of a character is to be printed. This process is called contextual analysis. Dot matrix printers have a character set of 128 codes including control codes, which implies that not all possible shapes of the Arabic alphabet can be loaded into the printer's memory. There are at least two solutions to this problem. One is to delete some of the shapes of certain characters. The other solution involves decomposing some of the shapes into common parts that can be combined to form the desired shape. In our approach, we use a combination of the two solutions. The result of this study is the development of two programs. One program is used to print Arabic text containing English text. The second program prints English text containing Arabic text. The programs change the fount of the printer according to the type of text. Both programs also perform contextual analysis of Arabic text.