Kurdish Programmer Puts Halabja on the App Store
Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 6:17 pmIn today’s computer age the Kurds are virtually illiterate because they do not have their own digital code for their ethnic language.
That is the world according to Layik Hama, a one-man Kurdish powerhouse who is the creator of an iPhone application on the 1988 Halabja tragedy -- just one of the ways this doctoral student in Britain is helping the Kurds gain a better foothold in cyberspace.
‘’For me, literacy in the 21st century is not just the ability to read and write text on paper, but it is the ability to read and write programming codes on computers,” says Hama, who is working on his PhD in computer programming, and who at age nine survived Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on Halabja, which killed 5,000 innocent Kurds.
Telling the story of Halabja through this pocket museum was only part of Hama’s plan. Along with the App he installed a Kurdish keyboard, something essential, he says, but lacking in current Smart Phones.
Hama’s free application, which can also be downloaded on iPad, takes the reader through a journey from Halabja to Saddam’s Nugra Salman prison. Using maps and facts from his personal journey, he hopes to raise awareness about the sufferings of the people of Halabja.
Hama envisions creating a virtual tour of the Halabja Memorial Monument in his application. ‘’There is nothing stopping us from making the actual memorial a digital one,” he says.
He explains that the release of his application was initially delayed because iTunes refused to allow the iconic photo of Omar Khawar, a Halabja father who died with his baby in his arms, as the picture for his App.
He worked around that, and his efforts finally paid off and the Halabja App is downloaded by 30-50 new users every day.
For Hama, who left Kurdistan 12 years ago, that was never the end goal. ‘’The ideal development is making the App available in as many languages as possible,’’ says Hama, who is currently developing 3D programming techniques to help geology students carry out their fieldwork on Smart devices.
Hama explains that, for the first time the names of those who perished in Halabja is publicly available on the App in a searchable format, the information obtained from the official memorial authorities in Halabja.
With his personal funding and time, Hama has carried the Halabja Memorial App this far. But he says that with proper funding he can “develop more content and set up an official commission such as the one responsible for the Memorial in Halabja.
‘’We could put the App at the hands of billions around the world,’’ he explains.
Hama says that developing the application took him eight weeks of fulltime work, including weekends and nights.
Having no support for the Kurdish script on modern devices is an age-old story, jokes Hama, “However, the App is there to keep the pressure on Apple to remember us.”
Working with KIG.org, an internet-based Kurdish group of computer programming experts, Hama says, “KIG has realized long ago the fundamental issues at the heart of any language to be used in the digital world.’’
“Unicode is the consortium which regulates the standard codes for every character used for every language on a particular machine,’’ he explains. ‘’As we hit the age of the Internet in the late 1990’s, we were faced with the dilemma of which code to use to be able to process and ‘view’ languages on various systems.”
“We, as Kurds, need to have an ‘encodable’ alphabet first,” Hama adds. “We also need to standardize the spelling of every Kurdish word which means we need a standard dictionary or corpus.’’
Meanwhile, he deplores that no official Kurdish department, university or even the media acknowledge the significance of this issue, which he considers so fundamental.
The list of Hama’s singlehanded and ambitious projects to reconcile the Kurdish language with the Internet is long. He has worked on a Kurdish translation for Google Maps Maker (Google cartographic tool).
He says that this project would help end the lack of surveying or mapping data by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), but that despite the hard work of a group of volunteers, Google has not given them any recognition since the Internet giant launched its own Northern Iraq maps in 2011.
“Having a Kurdish Google Maps Maker would help establish a comprehensive mapping tool for the Kurds,” says Hama.
One of Hama’s first dreams was to develop a registered domain name for Kurdistan, such as .ku or .krg, and for the purpose in 2007 he and another Iranian Kurdish senior IT manager, submitted a proposal to the KRG’s IT Department.
The project was eventually dropped, he says, because he did not receive any support from the KRG.
‘’Security is at the heart of everything in cyberspace,” Hama says of the importance of independent domain names. “If an authority wants to keep its data in its own control then you need to manage your own domains before even talking about data, rather than letting other people deal with it on their servers, located in other countries or even other continents.’’
Inspired by a British initiative (www.codeclub.org.uk), which gives children the expertise of coding and programming, Hama hopes to return to Halabja in the future and train teachers on how to teach children computer programming.
PIC OF THE APP:
http://rudaw.net/Library/Images/Uploade ... n3_opt.png
That is the world according to Layik Hama, a one-man Kurdish powerhouse who is the creator of an iPhone application on the 1988 Halabja tragedy -- just one of the ways this doctoral student in Britain is helping the Kurds gain a better foothold in cyberspace.
‘’For me, literacy in the 21st century is not just the ability to read and write text on paper, but it is the ability to read and write programming codes on computers,” says Hama, who is working on his PhD in computer programming, and who at age nine survived Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on Halabja, which killed 5,000 innocent Kurds.
Telling the story of Halabja through this pocket museum was only part of Hama’s plan. Along with the App he installed a Kurdish keyboard, something essential, he says, but lacking in current Smart Phones.
Hama’s free application, which can also be downloaded on iPad, takes the reader through a journey from Halabja to Saddam’s Nugra Salman prison. Using maps and facts from his personal journey, he hopes to raise awareness about the sufferings of the people of Halabja.
Hama envisions creating a virtual tour of the Halabja Memorial Monument in his application. ‘’There is nothing stopping us from making the actual memorial a digital one,” he says.
He explains that the release of his application was initially delayed because iTunes refused to allow the iconic photo of Omar Khawar, a Halabja father who died with his baby in his arms, as the picture for his App.
He worked around that, and his efforts finally paid off and the Halabja App is downloaded by 30-50 new users every day.
For Hama, who left Kurdistan 12 years ago, that was never the end goal. ‘’The ideal development is making the App available in as many languages as possible,’’ says Hama, who is currently developing 3D programming techniques to help geology students carry out their fieldwork on Smart devices.
Hama explains that, for the first time the names of those who perished in Halabja is publicly available on the App in a searchable format, the information obtained from the official memorial authorities in Halabja.
With his personal funding and time, Hama has carried the Halabja Memorial App this far. But he says that with proper funding he can “develop more content and set up an official commission such as the one responsible for the Memorial in Halabja.
‘’We could put the App at the hands of billions around the world,’’ he explains.
Hama says that developing the application took him eight weeks of fulltime work, including weekends and nights.
Having no support for the Kurdish script on modern devices is an age-old story, jokes Hama, “However, the App is there to keep the pressure on Apple to remember us.”
Working with KIG.org, an internet-based Kurdish group of computer programming experts, Hama says, “KIG has realized long ago the fundamental issues at the heart of any language to be used in the digital world.’’
“Unicode is the consortium which regulates the standard codes for every character used for every language on a particular machine,’’ he explains. ‘’As we hit the age of the Internet in the late 1990’s, we were faced with the dilemma of which code to use to be able to process and ‘view’ languages on various systems.”
“We, as Kurds, need to have an ‘encodable’ alphabet first,” Hama adds. “We also need to standardize the spelling of every Kurdish word which means we need a standard dictionary or corpus.’’
Meanwhile, he deplores that no official Kurdish department, university or even the media acknowledge the significance of this issue, which he considers so fundamental.
The list of Hama’s singlehanded and ambitious projects to reconcile the Kurdish language with the Internet is long. He has worked on a Kurdish translation for Google Maps Maker (Google cartographic tool).
He says that this project would help end the lack of surveying or mapping data by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), but that despite the hard work of a group of volunteers, Google has not given them any recognition since the Internet giant launched its own Northern Iraq maps in 2011.
“Having a Kurdish Google Maps Maker would help establish a comprehensive mapping tool for the Kurds,” says Hama.
One of Hama’s first dreams was to develop a registered domain name for Kurdistan, such as .ku or .krg, and for the purpose in 2007 he and another Iranian Kurdish senior IT manager, submitted a proposal to the KRG’s IT Department.
The project was eventually dropped, he says, because he did not receive any support from the KRG.
‘’Security is at the heart of everything in cyberspace,” Hama says of the importance of independent domain names. “If an authority wants to keep its data in its own control then you need to manage your own domains before even talking about data, rather than letting other people deal with it on their servers, located in other countries or even other continents.’’
Inspired by a British initiative (www.codeclub.org.uk), which gives children the expertise of coding and programming, Hama hopes to return to Halabja in the future and train teachers on how to teach children computer programming.
PIC OF THE APP:
http://rudaw.net/Library/Images/Uploade ... n3_opt.png
but the pic is on rudaw site of what the app looks like 
