VOA Urdu opted for Nastaleeq Urdu font
Voice of America(VOA) is one of the largest International broadcasting service of the world. It has an estimated 134 million audience worldwide. So, naturally there web presence get more attention than any other ordinary news site. It’s British counterpart BBC is on top among all Broadcasting services in terms of radio & web audience.. VOA speaks about 45 languages to present its new service on radio & internet.
Here in Pakistan VOA Radio is 2nd popular service after BBC radio. If we rank Urdu news sites in Pakistan, VOA Urdu comes after BBC Urdu & Jang Online. News sites are quite popular among Pakistan internet population. So, lower in ranks doesn’t mean VOA Urdu is totally out of competition.
Getting back to the topic, earlier VOA Urdu was using Urdu Naskh Asiatype as primary font for their site. Orignally Urdu Naskh Asiatype was developed by Liwal Software for BBCurdu.com. “Naskh” style is basically for Arabic while Urdu has its own writing style called “Nastaleeq“. Few months back it was only a dream to use a Nastaleeq font that can work equally fine on all Operating Systems as well all browsers. But thanks to Alvi Amjid who developed and released a font called “Alvi Nastaleeq” towards the end of 2008.
Recently VOA Urdu dropped Naskh font and opted for Alvi Nastaleeq. It is a giant step keeping in view issue related to font size & copyrights of this particular font. But one thing for sure is, now their web site seems a lot better and “Urdu-ish” after adopting this font(see screenshot above). This step is a huge success for volunteers that are working for development of Urdu.
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Sajid! thanks for sharing this great news. I think VOA done a great job to recognize work of volunteers.