Solutions to some of the Problems of Farsi Writing and its Automation

Farsi writing has some problems These Problems are numerous and make its reading and writing so difficult that even the best-educated Farsi-Speaking graduates are faced with difficulties in correct reading and writing (orthography). These problems, while working with computers, dealing with Farsi language, cause difficulties as well, and as it is well known, using computers for working with the Farsi language is widespread, necessary and unavoidable. Therefore, something should be done so that Farsi writing becomes easy and practical both for man, and for computerized applications, which in this article is referred to as automation of the Farsi language. These problems can not be ignored because they are the root cause of various cultural and economic losses such as a high incidence rate of poorly literate or completely illiterate citizens and costing a lot of time for the learners of Farsi language. Therefore provisions for their correction should be attempted. The topic of making a reform or some corrections in Farsi writing has been discussed for many years, and many literary circles have supported the necessity of changing the present system of writing, and some have even devised a different alphabet. Some also have suggested that the adoption of the Latin alphabet is the only possible alternative, while some have regarded left to right writing of Farsi as a necessary solution. But despite the agreement of all circles on the necessity of making corrections and changes, Farsi is running its chaotic course suffering in-born anomalies. There are of course others who oppose these changes and corrections altogether. Apparently, most of these opponents do not show agreement to the Changes of the farsi writing, because they care for the rich treasure of the Farsi literature and fear breaking the ties with it. Therefore, it seems that if a solution is presented that differs little in appearance with the present style of writing, it may face a better chance of approval and consensus. The authors of this paper, who believe in the necessity of changes to the farsi writing, have presented their solutions with this central idea in mind. The solutions include: reduction of the forms of Alphabet into only two forms for each letter (capital and small) and separating the letters while printing, separation of the words by a single space so that they could be easily recognized, connection of combining words and putting a hyphen (-) between such words if the combinations is not easily recognized, writing down of letters which are pronounced but not written, introduction of a character (-) to represent possession, deletion of diacritical marks, not distinguishing between and آwriting letters lam and aleph in substitution of ligature لا, and writing from left to right, Using these suggestions simplifies the reading, writing, and automation of the Farsi language.