by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2013/10/09, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/10/09/10455209.aspx
I don't usually tend to think of myself as a hero.
Not that I'm against the idea, but I just don't think of myself that way, by default.
But then one day, someone is just praising you!
Like yesterday, when I got to see ali eteraz's The Death of the Urdu Script.
That blog says many kind things about me and references several of my Nastaliq blogs like Nastaliq is not just another script... and The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 9: Nastaleeq vs. Nastaliq? Either way, Windows 8 has got it!.
That last blog pointed out the amazing Urdu Typesetting font that brings Nastaliq to the wider world, so that the old world of having to own InPage is a definite part of the past...
It can be hard to communicate the importance of the difference between Naskh and Nastaliq. I've almost convinced myself to give up on trying to describe why they are treated so differently by Urdu speakers in India and Pakistan. But I know I can't give it up. Not now that we give them the font to do it!
Either way, I now follow @eteraz on Twitter and will watch his Blog, too.
Stuff like this is similarly humbling:
Maybe I will get lucky and he will be at the upcoming IUC (Internationalization and Unicode Conference). I'll be there doing a talk or two...
It is great to be somebody's hero, in any case!
One more thing. The most important thing...
If there is a hero here, it isn't me.
Okay, I recognize the importance of Nastaliq in Urdu, that is just me being a good World-Readiness Program Manager. Cool, I earned my paycheck that week.
I evangelize the need to solve a problem, which is cool.
And I blog about things later, which is cool too.
But the hero here would be Basit Ali, the guy who worked so hard to make Urdu Typesetting work as well as it does.
Plus Microsoft for putting it in Windows 8. Now *that* is kinda heroic, too.
I'm not the hero; I'm technically more like the herald! 😏;-)
With all that said, I have two points I have to make since the Twitter conversation has moved to Windows Phone:
I can talk to people and ask questions and argue issues, but that's all....
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