The Arabic texts are in the international standard code page (character set) for Arabic, ISO 8859-6 (ASMO 708). This is the code set used by Apple in its Macintosh computers and in Microsoft's Arabic DOS and Sakhr's Arabization program for DOS. It is easily converted to the Arabic 1256 code page used in Microsoft's Arabic Windows programs. Arabic plain-text files in the ISO 8859- 6 code page have the extension .txt.
The Persian texts are in the Iranian national standard, ISIRI 3342. Urdu texts will soon be in Apple's Urdu encoding for the Mac [is there an Urdu 8-bit encoding endorsed by a standards body?]
The system of transliteration used is that of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, but with the following modifications:
You may view a .gif file of the transliteration system of the Encyclopaedia of Islam by clicking here.
As will be noticed, the Qalam web site is in the early stages of
construction. Qalam welcomes all contributions of electronic texts in
Arabic-script languages. If you have texts produced in a word-processor,
please save them as plain-text files before sending them to Qalam. Files
can be sent by ftp to http://leb.net/qalam/incoming/, or by e-mail or
e-mail attachment to Qalam
You may browse through all the Qalam directories with either http or ftp.
You may also gain direct ftp access to any of the following directories.
You will find an index of the individual files in each directory.
