Spring 2000 (8.1)
Page 16

Seven Good Reasons to Standardize Azeri Fonts

Standardizing Azeri fonts will have a profound impact on the use of the Azeri language among Azerbaijanis all over the world. Here's what could happen:

1. No more headaches and hassles trying to read Azeri files created by others who use different fonts. It would eliminate the need to request accompanying fonts and installing them on your computer just to be able to read.

2. IBM could read Mac and vice versa. When files are transferred via e-mail, Azeri language documents created on a Mac system can be read by an IBM system and vice versa as long as both parties use consistent character font assignment and the same software application.

3. CD Dictionaries and Spell Check programs could be developed! Spell Check will save enormous time in proofreading and give an enormous boost to standardizing Azeri spelling. Bilingual dictionaries could be made available on CDs as well as on the WEB. Without standardization, you'll need to keep a dictionary handy nearby.

4. More font styles. Tired of using Times, Arial or Helvetica? Once the character assignment standards are in place, just watch how font styles "spring up like mushrooms after rain".

5. Bothered by seeing dollar marks like "$" for "" in e-mail messages as individuals improvise their own system to represent characters in the Azeri alphabet. Standardized fonts would eliminate those weird symbols created at personal whim. Simply, the receiving party would open the e-mail message and convert it to any Azeri font style he wishes. Voila! Standard Azeri Latin!

6. The "lost generation" of youth growing up in Azerbaijan today who have been cut off from written sources would get a second chance to make up for the academic years that were wasted because materials were not available in the new Latin script.

7. Reasonable goals can be set for thousands of documents and books to be scanned in the same amount of time it would take to type a few hundred texts in the original Azeri Cyrillic. After scanning, Cyrillic can be converted to Azeri with a single computer command. This will eliminate spending weeks and months retyping and proofreading all these valuable intellectual resources that were created during the Soviet period that should be made available for future generations. Once the texts are in electronic form, the choice can be made to reprint the materials by traditional printing methods or by posting on government, institutional or personal WEB sites.


From Azerbaijan International (8.1) Spring 2000.
© Azerbaijan International 2000. All rights reserved.

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