And a SxS comparison of how much difference Nastaliq makes to readability !! (Article from Jang)

Since I can't force people to adopt better standards, so instead I did the next best thing. A web extension that renders Urdu in Nastaliq so that you can have a consistent, beautiful font across all pages.

However a lack of adoption of standard web practices and standards by Urdu developers means that a vast number of Urdu websites are rendered in some form of Naskh instead of Nastaliq

The Urdu on the internet, however, is... not. It's written generally in Naskh, that looks like this (cc: @bbcurdu.bsky.social).
This isn't because fonts aren't available. We have had urdu fonts since the 80s with Noori Nastaliq. The contemporary font space includes fonts like Mehr, Noto and Gulzar

I can read Urdu that is on the internet, but the experience is jarring. The Urdu I encounter every day in newspapers, on signs, is written beautifully in Nastaliq:

Github: github.com/osama-khalid...

You can download it for Chrome here: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/osama...

and for Firefox here: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo...

And because I enjoy making videos, I made a short video demoing the functionality and the problem it solves. 3/n

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2B-...

Problem: Everytime I come across a word in my L2 that I don't know, I find myself copy-pasting it into a translator and it breaks my reading flow.

Solution: A tool that can instantly translate a selected word to my L1 using a keyboard shortcut, and it tracks of all the new words I look up. 2/n

References
1. ai.meta.com/research/no-...
2. onlinebooksoutlet.com/products/roa...
3. huggingface.co/hexgrad/Koko...

Over the weekend, I digitized and OCRed parts of it and then used Kokoro TTS [3] to generate an audiobook.

This is a proof of concept—not intended to be perfect, but rather an attempt to probe the limits of TTS in Urdu. 3/3

Once upon a time my friend, Abdullah gave me a copy of Roald Dahl's Boy that his mom had translated into Urdu [2]. 2/3

🙋‍♂️ I am finishing my PhD