Spring 2000 (8.1)

The Land of Azeri Fonts
It's a Jungle Out There

by Rovzat Gasimov and Jean Patterson

ASCII Assignment for Azeri Latin Fonts
ASCII (pronounced ask-key) is the acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a universal system of numbering characters. Every text character, tab mark, paragraph mark, and other common text symbol has its own ASCII number, which all computers understand.

The reason why documents in Azeri on one computer sometimes look garbled on another is that the numeric assignment is different. To solve the problem, the Azerbaijan government needs to decide upon a numerical sequence that all fonts-both Azeri Latin and Azeri Cyrillic-should follow. The random sequence and lack of compatibility has arisen primarily because individuals (usually out of desperation to use Azeri on their computers) have designed their own fonts and made their own letter assignment, unaware of what others have created. The result is chaotic because few people can share their files on disk or via e-mail or the Internet. Standardization of font assignment is long, long overdue. It's a problem that must be solved.

The numerical assignment for each letter should be in alphabetical sequence for Azeri Latin (the sequence is different for Azeri Cyrillic). Keyboard assignment is an entirely different issue and is not linked whatsoever to ASCII assignment. Letters can be placed anywhere on the keyboard regardless of their ASCII assignment.

All fonts listed here are for IBM. Obviously there are many more.

1 Az-Times_LAT: President's Office and SOCAR 2 Az Bookman, Courier Latino, Arial AzLat: Intrans 3 A_Ceyhun 4 Az Arial: Azerbaijan Embassy in U.S. 5 Az-Times-Lat

6 Az2 Arial AzLat: Unocal 7 Alk Az TmsL, Alk Az HlvL 8 Azari Kamran.R_Times: Durna 9 TNA_Times_AZ, TNA_Arial_AZ: Turan News 10 Times Roman AzLat: Cabinet of Ministers

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

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