Blog Updates: Dragomen, writing style & other ongoing projects

بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Dragomen

My previous discussions here and here have culminated in the launch of my project called Dragomen.

Dragomen is focused on three broad sub-projects:

Adding harakat (vowel signs) to Classical Arabic texts

I am using shakkelha. Based on previous analyses, this is the most cutting-edge option.

I am currently attempting to add harakat to a book called: Al-waraqat by Al-Juwayni and compare it to what Shamela offers (in terms of its harakat tool).

I downloaded the ePub version of this book and used an online converter to make it a text file.

Other options for converting include:

• https://pypi.org/project/epub2txt/ - Python
• https://github.com/kevinboone/epub2txt2 - C

Preliminary results indicate 80% or so effectiveness in adding harakat.

Translating the works

I have settled on Weblate for fixing both the AI-generated harakat and then translating the texts.

The outcome of the experiment discussed above will be communicated later.

Rebuilding Quran Corpus

The Quran Corpus rebuild will use INCEpTION.

A related sub-development is the 85% Quranic words with contextual examples based on the 85% of Quranic Words from Understand Quran.

This has resulted in creating some useful source data from the morphology of the original Quran Corpus.

Funding

To sustain Dragomen, I have considered printing/publishing verified hard-copies (with the added harakat) of Classical Arabic(Islamic) texts.

Providing a subscription-based, Open Source, hosting alternative to proprietary platforms (like the Google Suite) is also under consideration.

I do not intend to use the Patreon/donation style of funding.

Writing style

I am trying to be more succinct in my writing style. I would like to use more prose, but for now my goal is to write clearer and do so more often.

The inspiration for this is from the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him), who although unlettered, spoke succinctly.

Migrating away from GitHub

I do not like using GitHub because Open Source software should be built using Open Source tools. For this reason and the recent debacle about licensing, I am migrating my software projects to four alternative hosts:

• https://gitlab.com/Kentoseth
• https://codeberg.org/kentoseth
• https://bitbucket.org/Kentoseth
• https://www.opencode.net/Kentoseth