GOZARESH-E-COMPUTER Computer Report Vol. 15, No. 123 January-February 1994 Publisher : Informatics Society of Iran (ISI) President: Ebrahim N. Mashayekh Vice-President: Ali Parsa Secretary: Dr. Mehdi Beheshtian Treasurer: Mohammad M. Abdollahi Committees Publishing: Ebrahim N. Mashayekh Science and Technology: Mohammad M. Abdollahi Education: Ebrahim Abtahi Public Relations: Dr. Mohammad Sanati Membership: Mohammad-Hassan Mehvari (All activities done by the Board members are voluntarily) Circulation: CR is published bimonthly by ISI. Please address your subscription requests to: Anoosh Hosseini, P.O.Box 61622, Sunnyvale, CA 94088 USA, anoosh@sgi.com Annual subscription is included in membership fee. Non-member price: US$ 30 per year ( 6 copies). CR features original and translated articles, news and reviews on all aspects of computers in Iran and abroad. Submissions: Submit you article to: The Editor, Computer Report, P.O.Box 1196, Tehran 14155, IRAN, isi@irearn.bitnet. All submissions are subject to editing for style, clarity and space consideration. Editorial: Unless otherwise stated, articles and reports reflect the author's opinion. Inclusion does not neccessarily imply approval of ISI. Mailing List Rental: ISI lists are available for computer-related products and services. Postmaster: Send address changes to: ISI, P.O.Box 1196, Tehran 14155, IRAN. Copyright (c) 1994 by Informatics Society of Iran, all rights reserved. Copying without fee is permitted with credit to the source. CR's camera ready copies are produced using TeX-e-paarsi typesetting system. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CONTENTS OF FARSI SECTION%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Articles: A Tool for Developing Expert Systems 24 Computer Crimes 56 Mind-Storms 46 Persian Character Set for Information Exchange 84 A Survey on Information Technology in Iran 73 Software: Graphical User Interface (3) 94 Interview: Dave Andrews: News Editor in Byte Magazine 40 Josef Weizenbaum: Professor of Computer Science in MIT 43 Reports: Islamic Software Exhibition 54 Computer Market in 1993 88 Third Iranian Olympiad of Informatics 62 ANSI C++ or X3J16 93 Departments: News 8 Letters 22 Technically Speaking 100 Calendar 98 Computer in Universities in the year 2025 71 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%% N E W S %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% by: Amin Mohadjer New Issues of Persian Computing Review --------------------------------------- Issues 2 & 3 of Persian Computing Review is out now. This journal is published quarterly in English by BRAIN Computer Systems Group in co-operation with Informatics Society of Iran. The material printed in issues 2 & 3 comprises such papers as A Persian Graphical User Interface Toolkit, Developement of a Persian User Interface, ASCII Encoding of the Persian Language, Connecting Iran to a Wide Area Network with Interconnected MANs and LANs, TeX-e-paarsi: Development and Features, Persian Data Exchange in Heterogeneous Networks, and World's Standard Organizations. Other sections include letters, news, events, book review, and a bibliography of Arabic Computing. For subscription information call or fax +98 21 980 102, e-mail: amin@acm.org. Microsoft Persian Windows ------------------------- Microsoft has launched a Persian version of Microsoft Windows 3.1, a move which it says gives the potentially vast market for computer programs in Persian its first significant recognition by the international software industry. While Persian layers already exist, this is the first time that the Windows GUI (Graphical User Interface) operating system has been made available in Persian, including all the features of Microsoft Windows. "The move into the Iranian market is very significant for Microsoft," said Charles Allen, General Manager of Microsoft Middle East. "This is a very big market, not just within Iran but in many countries of Persian Gulf and elsewhere. Persian users can expect to see the range of Microsoft core business applications localized in Persian in the near future, starting with the Microsoft Excel 5.0 spreadsheet program." Microsoft Windows has an estimated 25 million users around the world, with versions having been produced for most major languages. Persian Microsoft Windows 3.1 is supplied with four fonts and is designed to significantly increase productivity and ease-of-use for Persian users who will benefit from a fully-localized user interface and Persian on-line help. Alef Publisher -------------- Tehran-based Gam Electronics has announed the availability of Alef publisher, apparently the only Persian desktop publisher which supports Nasta'liq (traditional) style of writing. Alef prints on PostScript, laser and dot-matrix printers as well as on LaserMasters and imagesetters. Alef users can define and save a specific design (newsletter, press release, etc) as a style sheet. Style sheets can be later recalled to produce that specific design again, therefore saving both time and efforts in producing documents of similar look. The typefaces can have a varied size of 1 to 1,000 points and can expose different styles such as Italic, Iranic, and Shadowed. Alef features a spell checker and provides support for accents and vowels. It is able to save in several graphics formats, so Persian words and statements can appear in Latin Windows applications such as CorelDraw, Paintbrush, and Adobe Photoshop to name a few. Alef can produce a variety of background patterns and allows users to design their own patterns. It has automatic indexing and a table tool. The company has signed several distributors in Tehran and other cities to offer the product. AryaSoft 1373 Diary -------------------- AryaSoft of Tehran has developed a Persian Personal Information Mangager (PIM). 1373 Diary works under DOS and is fully graphical based. It contains both Christian and Hedjri (Shamsi and Ghamari) calenders and allows users to browse days, weeks, months and years at a glance. Users can write notes and memos and set the alarm accordingly, so it will ring on the specified moment to remind user of the action he wanted to take. Since the program goes resident in memory, the alarm works inside all applications. An advanced version allows users with a sound card installed to record and replay their voice messages. The program works in a network, therefore users can leave messages for each other. A password can be set to act against unauthorized users trying to read other people's messages. Using special graphical symbols, user can mark special days such as birthdays, so he can quickly look up for these entries. Search on a word or a set of words is possible. 1373 diary works on a 286 or higher machine with a VGA display and supports mouse. Education Software Bank ------------------------- The Research Deputy of Ministry of Higher Education has set up country's first education software bank. The bank is yet to become open to the public and at present only those students who are studying toward a M.S. or PhD can have access. Computers for Employment Office ---------------------------------- The country's Employment Office has set up its own computer department. This department employs a model 90 IBM ES/9377 mainframe and a network of PCs. The Office has announced its readiness to offer computer services to other organizations. Currently, records of all government employees are kept on these machines. Fadjr Micro-computer --------------------- Tehran-based Fadjr Riz Pardaz has introduced MET-88 micro-computer. MET-88 employs Intel 8088 microprocessr. The LCD display allows two rows of 40 characters each. Other specifications are internal assembler and debugger, two PC/XT compatible slots, and three 8-bit ports. Three counters, timer, six hardware interrupts, serial connectivity with tapes and RS-232 port, and parallel connectivity with printers are among other features. MET-88 is recommended for industrial and educational applications and Fadjr Riz Pardaz offers after sales support and services on this machine. Private Companies to Undertake Telecom Projects --------------------------------------------------- State-owned Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) which holds a monopoly on country's telecom sector, has announced plans to give private sector companies a chance to undertake some of its projects. TCI has announced tenders for creation of paging and mobile networks as well as for telephone switching centers with a capacity of under 2,000 lines. The private companies will be also permitted to offer value-added telecommunication services to their customers. WATCOM Arrives in Iran ---------------------- The Canadian Company WATCOM has appointed Tehran-based Baharak Computer as his Iranian distributor. Baharak now offers a wide range of WATCOM products such as WATCOM C9.0/386, WATCOM FORTRAN 77, and WATCOM SQL. Using WATCOM products, Baharak has developed several application programs including, BARA for Windows (a database management system). Hesabdar for Windows (an accounting program), and Bazargan (a sales tracking system) which runs under DOS and Windows. Baharak has also developed Who Is Who; a Personal Information Manager (PIM) and Mini Lan 64, a connectivity solution for Commodore 64 which allows data exchange with PCs. Multilingual Solution for Windows --------------------------------- Santa Monica-based Gamma Productions, Inc. has announced the availability of Gamma UniVerse for Windows. As a multi-language word processing and font system, UniVerse supports cyrillic, Central/East/West/European, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Hebrew, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and South East Asian languages. It supports mixing languages in any document or in any line and includes support for mixing bidirectional text and contextual analysis. Cut & Paste multi-language text between multiple windows of the same or different documents as well as text export via the Clipboard to all other Windows applications such as CorelDraw, PageMaker or Excel is also supported. Hyphenation and spell checking for almost all supported languages including Arabic and Russian is included. Spell checking support for Persian is not available yet. Full Unicode and ISO compliance assures the user of multi-language compatibility across platforms and applications such as multi-language OCR or Machine Assisted Translation Packages. Universe uses standard Windows fonts for West European languages. All other languages come with one TrueType scalable font in a regular weight. Windows automatically generates a matching bold and italic face. Additional fonts are shipped separately. For more information call Gamma Productions on 310-394-8622 (Fax: 310-395-4214). PCR Goes Online ----------------- Aristarchus Knowledge Industries in Tucson, Arizona which is the producer of Asia Pasific Database (File 30 on DIALOG information Systems) has abstracted PCR into this database. From now on, users of DIALOG can find quick and easy access to PCR abstracts as soon as they get online. Middle East Abstracts & Index, an annual bibliographic reference work on the Middle East also plans to abstract PCR into its information system. Information about PCR has been also placed in several online database. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Persian Desktop Publishing by Amin Mohadjer The fact that Persian and Arabic languages use similar scripts for their writing system is not a guarantee that software programs developed with needs of Arab users in mind will appeal to Persian users. Beside minor differences in alphabet, the look of Arabic typefaces do not satisfy the taste of Iranian users. As far as language-related software are concerned, the technology is not the only thing that counts. The demand for Persian desktop publishing programs in Iran's market is higher than any other software product. The prove is the fact that sales of Persian desktop publishers account for the major part of Iranian software vendors revenue. A dozen local company have already step in market with reasonable desktop publishing solutions and several foreign companies have found the market big enough to develop Persian versions of their Latin or Arabic desktop publishers. Zarnegar from SinaSoft is evidently the most popular Persian desktop publishing package available on DOS platform. Despite a high price tag of 1,200,000 Rials (US$1 = 2100 Rials), the company has sold well over other rivals. Today, over 100 of country's leading magazines and newspapers (book publishers apart) use Zarnegar for their typesetting and page making purposes. Version 2.0, the latest incarnation of Zarnegar now offers support for PostScript printers and can benefit from 600 dot per inch print resolution of HP 4 and compatible printers. The newly added Persian spell checker which is based on a mere 20,000-word dictionary uses linguistics rules to figure out the correct spelling of Persian words. Several Persian and Latin TrueType sacalable typefaces as well as a number of new bitmap fonts have been introduced in the new version. SinaSoft also offers a no-print version of Zarnegar at a far lower price. It can only be used for editing, typesetting, and laying out pages and not for printing to printers. Zarnegar is run on a 80286 machine with 2 MB of RAM upwards. HP family of laser printers and compatibles, HP DeskJet compatible Ink Jet printers, and Epson compatible dot matrix printers are all supported. User definable keyboard, mouse support, Persian naming convention of directories and files, imports and exports from and to popular word processors, handling of accents and vowels, portrait and landscape printing, and a font editor which can be used by users to design their own fonts are among other features built into Zarnegar. Although, Zarnegar is text-based, a print preview option allows users to see the right and left pages face to face prior to sending them to printer. Zarnegar 2.0 also benefits from automatic indexing, a feature which can be used to compile index pages automatically. The company attended Gitex 1993 where it introduced an Arabic version of Zarnegar. SinaSoft plans to market Arabic Zarnegar in Middle East in coming months and is reportedly working on a Windows version. Naghsh from Saberin Publishing in also gaining much popularity. As the first Persian desktop publisher supporting 600 dpi printers, Naghsh got a jump start over other rivals. Excluding Gamma Productions' MLS, Naghsh is the only Persian desktop publisher which can print to a PCX graphics file; therefore making its Persian printout accessible in graphics packages. Fax/modem cards can also send PCX files; therefore Naghsh can fax its printout to a fax machine directly. Other features include: expanded and extended memory support for editing large files, automatic indexing, automatic numbering of chapters and sections, mouse support, print preview, a spell checker, a font editor, and a table drawing tool. Like Zarnegar, Naghsh has a no-print version which is sold at a lower price. Naghsh plans to offer support for PostScript printers in future releases. Naghsh is text-based and runs on DOS machines. The company is working on an Arabic version and a Persian OCR engine at the same time and plans to release a Windows version soon. MLS (short for Multi-Lingual Scholar), a product of Gamma Productions, Inc., was among the first desktop publishing programs arrived in Iran's market. Even today, despite this fact that Gamma Productions stopped marketing MLS in Iran long ago, some of the country's biggest publishers and magazines rely totally on MLS for their publishing work. Version 4.0 marks the latest release for DOS and the company has apparently moved to Windows platform since then. MLS was fully graphical-based from its first release. Powerful word processing features combined with extreme ease of use have made MLS a proper and affordable solution for not so fancy desktop publishing needs. MLS runs on 8088 upwards and even offers support for Hercules graphics cards. The number of fonts available is numerous, thanks to a built-in font editor program which comes with the package. Most of MLS Persian fonts were developed locally in Iran and passed along with every copy. MLS can be obtained in Iran's market for under $50 and sometimes free. MLS supports dot-matrix and laser printers, has a print preview option, and comes with an online tutorial. The manual is in English. Keyboard layout can be defind by user and files can be imported from and exported to several word processors. Style sheets make it easy for users to produce professional looking documents of various kinds. The product lacks a Persian spell checker. There is no official distributor for MLS in Iran. Recently launched Alef Publisher is apparently the only Persian desktop publisher which supports Nasta'liq (traditional) writing style. Developed by Gam Electronic, Alef Publisher supports printing on PostScript, laser, and dot-matrix printers as well as on LaserMasters, and imagesetters. The typefaces can have a varied size of 1 to 1000 points. A spell cheker, ability to save in several graphics formats, support for accents and vowels, automatic indexing and a table drawing tool are among features. The company has signed 11 distributors in Tehran and other cities to sell the product. Currently, Vazheh Nagar and Gamma UniVerse are the only desktop publishing packages available under Microsoft Windows. Santa Monica-based Gamma Productions, Inc., well-known in Iran for its DOS-based Multi-Lingual Scholar (MLS) has developed Gamma UniVerse for Windows; a multi-language WYSIWYG desktop publishing and font system which supports Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Arabic languages among others. It supports mixing languages in any document or in any line and includes support for mixing bidirectional text and contextual analysis. Cut and paste multi-language text between multiple windows of the same or different documents as well as text export via the Clipboard to all other Windows applications such as CorelDraw, PageMaker or Excel is also supported. Hyphenation and spell checking for Arabic is included but support for Persian is not available yet. Full Unicode and ISO compliance assures the users of multi-language compatibility across platforms and applications such as multi-language OCR or Machine Assisted Translation packages. UniVerse uses standard Windows fonts for West European languages; Persian and Arabic languages come with one TrueType scalable font in a regular weight. Windows automatically generates a matching bold and italic face. Additional fonts are shipped separately. The introductory price is $149. Persian and Urdu modules are sold separately while Arabic is included in basic package. Included is support for 600 dpi HP laserJet 4. For an additional $99, one can buy nine more faces each for Arabic and Persian. Gamma is working on another release. Developed by Utah-based Eastern Language Systems, Vazheh Negar is miles ahead of Gamma Universe in Iran's market. Three distriubtors including, Ragham Pardaz, Iran Vazheh Negar, and Iran Hi-Tek are marketing the product in Iran. Vazheh Negar is WYSIWYG and has a total of 280 Latin and 34 Persian TrueType fonts. The contents of menus, dialog boxes, messages, and online help can appear in either Persian or English depending on user's choice. It has multi column capability and several keyboard maps and comes with its own keyboard template stickers. Since it is Windows-based, it can print to any Windows printers. It comes with a complete Persian and English Manual. Software is copy protected. Vazheh Negar used to sell for $595.00 up to 1993. On January 1994, the price was dropped to $229.00. Vazheh Negar is yet the only Persian desktop publisher which has a built-in fax send/receive capabilites. Ghalam from Tadarok Computer of Iran (TAKA) is the only Persian desktop publisher available for Atari computers. Isfahan-based Isfahan Computer markets Ghalamkar for DOS machines which is yet to find a strong foot hold in the market. Dadeh Pardazi of Khorasan, based in Mashhad sells Javaher Ghalam desktop publisher for both Amiga and IBM machines with fonts unrivalled in beauty. Ventura Publisher with support for Persian is also available in Iran's market. There are also several Persian typesetting programs available. ArabTeX, an incarnations of popular TeX/LaTeX typesetting program runs on PC, Mac, as well as on Unix and supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. ArabTeX is in public domain which means it is available to everybody free of charge. However, since TeX itself is not very user friendly, those who use ArabTeX or other Persian versions of TeX fell well among academia. ArabTeX 3.0 is the latest version released to date. Dadeh Kavi of Iran has a Persian version of TeX (TeX-e-paarsi). Two times the size of original TeX in coding, TeX-e-paarsi is seen by many as the Iranian's state-of-the-art in software design. TeX-e-paarsi supports Arabic, Urdu, and Pashto as well. The company has developed a Persian editor with Persian commands to bring ease of use to TeX. The company has sold copies to several publishing companies which use this program for typesetting of academic and teaching materials. TeX-e-paarsi runs under Unix and is sold for 1,750,000 Rials (single user edition). Its high price combined with its academic nature (good at dealing with formulas but suffers from lack of elegant fonts) has kept it on the side road of Persian desktop publishing market since its introduction a few years ago. Apparently, the biggest customer for TeX-e-paarsi is not academia but Municipality of Tehran. Latin version of TeX was put in public domain by its developers and is the de facto typesetting/desktop publishing solution when it comes to printing academic books and journals. The latest version is version 3.0. Persian Desktop Publishing Apple started well in Iranian desktop publishing market and took a noticable market share; but since Apple's Persian products are all developed abroad, they lack the local taste which contributes to sales of other desktop publishers. Besides, the high price of Machintosh machines combined by small number of software application available on them caused a shift toward low-priced IBM machines. Companies developing desktop publishing programs on IBM PCs did exteremly well in reversing the trend by introducing innovative features into their products and lowering their prices. The emergence of Microsoft Windows as an stable environement under which a new generation of programs with powerful graphics capabilities can be built contributed to drop in sales of desktop publishing solutions based on Apple machines. However, Persian versions of some well-known desktop publishers including, Diwan, Atelieh, and Nasher are in widespread use in Iran. Now, with spell checker engines mounted on almost all Persian desktop publishers, the next challenge is adding grammer checkers and OCR engines. The one who comes first with these mounted on his package, will likely grasp a large market share.