Quran Translation needs Your Help.

I understand that the text here might seem a little long and boring, but please bear with me. This is important. If you must skim, please read the last few paragraphs.

About an year ago, I grew frustrated with the lack of a readily usable version of the Quran translation in Dhivehi. Back then, I wanted to be able to use the Dhivehi translation with Zekr; a free (as in freedom) versatile open source Quranic study tool that came standard with a multitude of translations, recitations, localizations and so forth. I wished that the Dhivehi translation was also included among these for everyone to benefit from. For this, I needed a standards compliant plaintext UNICODE version of the translation which, needless to say was not available.

I searched high and low to find such a text. The PDF's available on Presidency Maldives where just that. PDF's from which - despited many hours spent trying - nothing "useful" could be extracted. All the while, interest in the efforts grew, and a few of my friends (Bunyameen, his brothers, Nisham, Nadheem and so on to name a few) volunteered to help.

We approached the Islamic Ministry, the Presidents Office, and all our friends in nooks and crannies of the government trying to obtain in the very least, an MS Word document that we could work with. None of these people were willing to part with anything useful - officially stating the reason that the subject of the Quran Translation was too "volatile" for them to release it. That there were people looking for commercial/political/religious/social/etc gain from the text.

Dhivehi for alQuran on iPhone is now LIVE!

grab it while it's fresh boys... in relation to my previous post here, Afxal an I have finally managed to push through the bundle to the public. Now this process is a wheeeeeeee hweeeeeeenee weeensy teeeeenee tiny bit risky so if you're very very unsure about it let somebody else help you out in installing.

Well there it is folks. Add http://m0bi.com/cydia to your cydia sources and enjoy!

As always, the release is issued under the terms of GNULesser license agreement.

iPhone Dhivehi Quran Translation

After much hacking away at the iPhone's file system over the last two days, I've finally managed to get Unicode thaana stuff to display properly on the iPhone iOS 4.x

THE BAD NEWS is that people using older 2G iphones running 3.x firmware are still outta luck on the unicode front. I'm working on it though...

anyway as a by product of the aforementioned success, I've managed to put together a little hack that'll add the Dhivehi translation of the Quran (as found on http://presidencymaldives.gov.mv/quran ) into the alQuran app from alMubin.com

the package will be available from afxals cydia repo at m0bi.com/cydia so just add that up and you'll be good to go. also depends on afxals thaana package for iOS, and erica utilities. Also you'll need to have alQuran installed. *if you needed me to tell you that then....well...what the hell..?*

here are some screenshots of it in action! (I KNOW that the text appears on the wrong side...I CAN fix it I just chose not to for reasons of...elegance lets say)

on the licensing side, since this will inevitably "mix" with non-free code, I am releasing it under GNULesser/LGPL

Now if you're curious on how I got the "dhivehi" to appear on the keyboard selection popup ... well let's just say I'm working on it.

 

Zekr: Changing Translation Display Font

Since I wrote about the availability of Dhivehi translation text for Zekr: The open source quranic study software, I've received numerous complaints about being unable to change the font that is used to display the text. Brother Mohsen of the Zekr project was kind enough to help us out.

(This article also titled: getting rid of or changing MV Boli font in Zekr) - that DAMNED boli font!

in Zekr, goto Tools->Options and select "View" from the side column. From here click the add (+) button to add a new setting key and call it "trans_dv_fontName" and click OK. You can now change the value assigned to this key and add "MV Faseyha" (or any other font you like).

You can also add "trans_dv_fontSize" to specify the size of the translation text.

On a side note, if you want the Quranic text to display nicely, download and install the me_quran font from http://arabicfonts.wikispaces.com/

Dhivehi Quran Translation now available for Zekr and Tanzil.info

UPDATE: The translation pack and is available from the Zekr website now. Download from there.

Ramazan Mubarik fellow bretheren. It gives me great pleasure to (sort of) formally announce the release of the Zekr Quranic study tool with Dhivehi localization and translation packs.

I'm also happy to announce that www.tanzil.info now hosts the Dhivehi translation of the Holy Quran for everybody to enjoy, free of charge.

This has been part of a MOSS initiative, and I'd like to thank everybody who worked on the project with me. Particularly Mohamed Malik, Bunyameen and Sobah.

As of version 1.0 of Zekr, you can select "Dhivehi" as a display language under tools->options.

The translation pack hasn't been officially sanctioned yet, we're waiting for the Presidents office to formally OK the project. Meanwhile, you're welcome to "unofficially" download and use it.

INSTALLATION is a simple three step process.

1. Download and install Zekr from www.zekr.org
2. Download the translation pack (see link belowupdate above)
3. Run Zekr. goto Tools->add->translation and select the zip file you just downloaded.

you can now select the translation under view->translation.

*note: if you encounter a "could not find Java VM" error, make sure you have a recent version of Java installed on your system. Download Java from http://www.java.com/en/download/

If you find any errors, please send an email to kudanai [yetu] gm[ail] dotu [comu]

you can find full details and installation instructions in this months MOSS magazine.

Download Dhivehi translation pack for Zekr

Zekr website