Use of arabic in computerized information interchange

There is a growing demand in the Arab world for the use of Arabic script in inputting and accessing information systems and the establishment of Arab databases. In all Arab countries, Arabic is the working language In management, business, accounting, education, arts, and literature and to a lesser extent in science, medicine, and engineering. Arab member countries in the International Information System for Agricultural Sciences and Technology (AGRIS), whose carrler language is English, face some difficulties in preparing documents in the Arabic language for AGRIS input. The method of script conversion through transliteration, which is used by AGRIS and the Library of Congress is neither helpful or acceptable to Arab librarians and Information specialists. These and similar complaints have prompted information and computer specialists to address the issues of Arabization of computer terminals and Input/output procedures. This article addresses the problem of Arabic computerized Information exchange and highlights the basic differences between treatment of Arabic and English. It also discusses the various Arab attempts to formulate standards for coding Arabic letters and vowels points and their sorting sequence. Another area that this article explores is the high degree of syntactical flexibility which characterizes the Arabic language and complicates data retrieval, computer aided translation, and human machine interface. A unified standard for the Arab/Latin Computer Code known as CODAR‐UFD based on the ASCII Code was adopted in 1982. This article discusses this new code and describes some of the existing terminals that use other codes.