History

History of Persian Computing

This page is a chronological history of Persian Computing.

Chronology

1960's

1963, ASCII standard is published, later also registered as ISO/IEC 646 and ECMA 6, basis of all modern encoding systems. [ASCII] [ISO/IEC 646]

1970's

1973-01-11, ISIRI 820 becomes the Iranian standard for Persian keyboard layout on typewriters. [standard]

1980's

1980-12-01, Gulf Data, Inc. registers the Arabrite trademark for a dual language word and data processing computer system. [trademarkia.com]
1981, Printer F1537-20 for the Sperry Univac 1100/60 System, the first mainframe to make use of multi-processor architecture, supports a 192-character Farsi/English character set. [bitsavers.org] [WP]
1982, DecoType starts working on Advanced Composition Engine (ACE).
1982, Arab Standardization and Metrology Organization publishes ASMO 449, a 7-Bit coded character set to encode the Arabic language, which later evolves into ISO/IEC 8859-6, the basis for Arabic script encoding in Unicode. [ASMO 449] [ASMO]
1983, ParsNegar word processor, a derivative of Arabrite, released for IBM PC and compatibles. [NEEDS_REF]
1984, Joe Becker publishes Multilingual Word Processing in Scientific American, talking about the need to distinguish characters and glyphs. [WP].
1986, Arab Standardization and Metrology Organization publishes ASMO 708, to be the 8-bit standard to be used in Arabic-speaking countries. The design of this character set was inspired by the previous 7-bit standard—ASMO 449—but it is not simply the 7-bit character set moved to the upper part; there are some differences. ASMO 708 is a bidirectional character set. The lower part of the character set differs from standard ISO 646 in the digits and in some punctuation. Depending on the context (whether the numbers are within Latin script or Arabic script), the digits are rendered either as Latin digits or Arabic digits. Also, depending on the context, symmetrical punctuation marks are reversed, i.e., whenever there is an opening punctuation mark, the shape is rendered differently according to the direction of the script. This standard was later registered as ECMA-114, ISO 8859-6, ISO/IEC 8859-6, and IR 127, and became the basis for Arabic block in Unicode. [ISO/IEC 8859-6]
1986-1987, Apple develops MacArabic character set. [WP] [unicode.org] This was the basis for the MacFarsi character set. [WP] [unicode.org]
1987-12, Mohammad Sanati, Mohammad Dadashzadeh and Mohammad B. Dadfar introduce Iranian Standard Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) in an article in Computer Standards & Interfaces (Volume 6 Issue 4, 1987, Pages 427 - 432), proposing Dual Coded encoding for Persian because of the need for joining control, missing in ASMO 449/708 standards. [article] [ScienceDirect] [ACM-DL] ISCII is the basis for ISIRI 2900 and ISIRI 2901 standards, published less than a year later.
1987, Joe Becker from Xerox, and Lee Collins and Mark Davis from Apple started investigating the practicalities of creating a universal character set, which gets the name Unicode in 1988. [WP]
1988-07-05, ISIRI 2900 becomes the Iranian standard for encoding of Persian in computers. (ASCII-based 8-bit shape-based/visual encoding.) [standard]
1988-07-05, ISIRI 2901 becomes the Iranian standard for Persian keyboard layout in computers. [standard]
198x, PE2, a DOS-based Persian-enabled text editor is developed by National Iranian Oil Company and used widely by corporations and typesetters. [screenshot]
198x or 199x, Sharp Word Processor (واژه‌پرداز شارپ) is developed by Madiran. [screenshot]
198x or 199x, Iran System encoding is developed by Iran System Co. and is widely used by the public. [WP]

1990's

1990, Farsi Code Set for Information Interchange (FSCII) is created. [NEEDS_REF]
1991, Zarnegar (first version) was released for DOS. [Zarnegar] [WP]
1991, ParsView, a bilingual English/Persian graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit, based on Sun's XView. [NEEDS_REF]
1992-07, Dictionary search program (dic.exe), an English-to-Persian dictionary DOS-based application is released by Virayeshgar Co. Ltd. [screenshot]
1992-09-01, IBM registers two sets of Coded Character Sets for Persian:
- Coded Character Set 1097 (0449 hex): FARSI EBCDIC [IBM], with 01097: Farsi Bilingual - EBCDIC [IBM] Code Page and 01219: Farsi Bilingual - 190 [IBM] Character Set.
- Coded Character Set 1098 (044A hex): FARSI - PC [IBM], with 0109: Farsi - Personal Computer [IBM] Code Page, and 01288: Farsi, PC Data [IBM] and 01285: Farsi, PC Display [IBM] Character Sets.
1992-12-06, ISIRI 3342 becomes the Iranian standard for encoding of Persian text in computers. (ASCII-based 8-bit semantic/logical encoding.) [standard] The standard introduces PSP (Pseudo Space or فاصله مجازی) as 0xA1 and PCN (Pseudo Connection or اتصال مجازی) as 0xA2, which later become ZWNJ (U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER) and ZWJ (U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER) in the Unicode Standard.
1992, The FarsiTeX Project is formed, to develop FarsiTeX, a free Persian/English bidirectional typesetting system based on Donald Knuth's TeX and Leslie Lamport's LaTeX. [FarsiTeX]
1993-04, First volume of Farsi Computing Review, a quarterly journal on Farsi Computing is published by Informatics Society of Iran, in co-operation with BRAIN Computer Systems Group, edited by Amin Mohadjer. [pdf] This volume contains five articles:
- A Persian Codeset for Information Interchange, S. Kazemi & M. Mohsen Zadeh.
- Farsi Computing: An Overview, A. Mohadjer.
- Farsi GUIs, A. Al-Salamah.
- An Approach to UNIX Farsi System, B. Torabi.
- Farsi Character Set: The Problem of Multiple Standards, M. Ziaei.
1993 ParsTex, a Persian typesetting system based on TeX. [NEEDS_REF] See also [SF.net] and [P-C].
1994-08-29, ISIRI 2901 is updated to incorporate new encoding by ISIRI 3342. [standard]
1995, Cinema '76, one of the first Persian Multimedia CD-ROMs, with Persian HyperText, is released.
1997/1998, Negara, a publishing platform for newspapers, with Persian full-text search, is made available to some publications, including Khordad and Fath newspapers. The system uses Windows-1256 encoding on both sides: the Windows native app for the back-office, and the public web interface powered by Microsoft IIS. [private conversation, @behnam's collection]
1998, International Systems Consultancy (Tooraj Enayati) has a new online home for ParsNegar. [isc.com.au] [isc.com.au] ParsNegar works in MS Windows (3.1 and 95, but not NT), comes with two extra Persian True-Type fonts, re-mappable keyboard layouts with on-screen keyboard, and online help. [isc.com.au]
199x, Various Persian versions of Windows 3.1x (and Windows NT 3.1) released in Iran, each having their own 8-bit (and possibly Unicode-based 16-bit) encoding.

2000's

2000, Zarnegar for Windows. [Zarnegar] [WP]
2000, FarsiWeb Project started at Sharif University of Technology. [PC-Ref]
2000, Persian Computing and FarsiWeb mailing lists are formed. [partial archives] [partial archives]
2000-04-22, Persian Digital Library, goes online with a collection of Hafez poems, encoded in Unicode. A few months later, Ahmad Shamlou's selected poems are added to the collection. [archive.org homepage, news]
2001-09-20, Rial Sign is proposed for encoding in Unicode, by Roozbeh Pournader of FarsiWeb Project. [N2373]
2002, IRNIC, the registry of dot-IR (.ir), starts working on the Persian Domain Name projects. [IRNIC]
2002, Persopedia, an online library of Persian poetry goes online, using Dorj Argham's data (with their permission), powered by Microsoft IIS. [archive.org]
2003, Sharif FarsiWeb, Inc. started business. [PC-Ref]
2003-12-18, ISIRI 6219 becomes the Iranian standard for encoding of Persian text in computers. (Unicode-based semantic/logical encoding.) [standard]
2005-12, IRNIC, the registry of dot-IR (.ir) and dot-Iran (‏.ایران) Country-Code Top-Level Domains, starts the test bed for Persian Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). [IRNIC] [IRNIC]
2005, Persopedia switches to Unicode. [archive.org]
2007-04-08, ISIRI 9147 becomes the Iranian standard for Persian keyboard layout in computers. [standard]
2008-06-11, Ehsan Akhgari publishes an implementation of [ISIRI 9147] for Windows, supporting ZWNJ on "Shift+Space" position. [ehsanakhgari.org]
2009, Persian Computing mailing list was moved to Google Groups.
2009, Google adds Persian Transliteration web app. [google.com] [PC]
2009-06-30, First official version of Persian Firefox is released by Mozilla. [mozilla.org]

2010's

2010, ICANN approved IRNIC's proposal for the dot-Iran (‏.ایران) IDN ccTLD, pending the final step of String Delegation. [ICANN]
2011-08-10, Behnam Esfahbod publishes two keyboard layouts for Windows, ISIRI 9147 and Enhanced Microsoft Persian layout, supporting ZWNJ on Shift-Space position. [PC]
2013, Persian Computing Community introduces Persian Typography mailing list. [PT]
2013, IranNastaliq font is released. [yjc.ir]
2014, Microsoft adds Persian (Standard) keyboard layout, implementing ISIRI 9247. [behnam.es] [PC]
2015, Leila Typeface, first functional handwriting-style Persian font, is released by Reza Bakhtiarifard. [Behance] [PT]
2017-07-05, Persian Computing website is moved to GitHub. [PC]
2017, Arabic Type-Making in the Machine Age (The Influence of Technology on the Form of Arabic Type, 1908–1993) book, by Titus Nemeth, is published. [Brill]
2017, Persian keyboard is added to Apple iOS. [BBC]
2017, Apple introduces San Francisco Arabic, a new Perso-Arabic system/UI font for macOS, iOS, etc. [Apple-Forum]
2017, Kanun, first Perso-Arabic chromatic font was released by Kourosh Beigpour. [G+] [Granshan]