challenges and opportunities for presenting arabic manuscripts online
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Challenges and opportunities for presenting Arabic
manuscripts online
Dr. Tristan Roddis, CogappThe Islamic Manuscript Association Conference,
September 2016
@tristan_roddis tristanr@cogapp.com
Background: Cogapp
•Digital innovation since 1985•Client list includes Qatar National
Library, British Library, National Archives, etc.
•Multilingual sites and interactives (including Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew)
Background: Qatar Digital
Library
www.qdl.qa
Qatar Digital Library
•Online since October 2014•Over 800,000 digitised pages•Including 10,000 manuscript pages•Over 100 contextual articles•Content from British Library and
Qatar National Library•Bilingual in Arabic and English
Challenges•Multilingual CMS•Layout•Reading direction•Search•Images
Challenge:multilingual CMS
•We use Drupal extensively•Excellent multilingual support•Editing interface also translated•Even better in Drupal 8
Things to consider•Fallback language•Translation of categories and
taxonomies•URL translation
Right-to-left text
•<html dir=“rtl”>•‏
Mixed directions
Also consider bidirectional override <bdo>
Challenge:reverse layout
Challenge: images
•Avoid text in images•Reverse image ordering
Challenge:Arabic numerals
•Western Arabic versus Eastern Arabic numerals
•N.b. read left-to-right!
Challenge: Reading direction
Beware web fonts•Unsupported characters, especially
for mixed language•Even transliteration can cause
problems•E.g. →•See this article on diacritics
Mixed language; diacritics
Beware fonts
Beware fonts
Beware fonts
Don’t compromise design
Challenge: search
•Stemming•Normalisation
Unresolved challenges
•Arabic OCR•Correcting transcriptions•Translating transcriptions•Hijri dates•Geo search
Opportunities
•Search•Images
Opportunity: search
•Autocomplete•Facets•Date search
Autocomplete
Facets
Facets
Date search
Opportunity: images
•Zoom•Crop•Reuse•Compare
Opportunity: IIIF
•International Image Interoperability Framework
•Defined interfaces for serving images and metadata
•Flexible! Futureproof! Fun!
http://images.qdl.qa/…/full/600w,/0/default.jpg
http://images.qdl.qa…/pct:45,20,40,25/600w,/0/
default.jpg
http://images.qdl.qa/…/pct:45,20,40,25/600w,/180/
default.jpg
Alternative viewers
•Mirador•Universal Viewer•Both with drag-and-drop support
Other uses of IIIF
Example: Digital Mushaf
Example: Biblissima
Example: Biblissima
Summary
•Lots of challenges•Lots of opportunities•We’d love to help you
Thank you
•tristanr@cogapp.com•@tristan_roddis•www.qdl.qa •www.cogapp.com
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