Urdu computing standards: Urdu Zabta Takhti (UZT) 1.01

Software development in Urdu has been going on for more than three decades. However, until recently there were no industry standards for coding in Urdu, similar to ASCII standard for English. Keeping in view the necessity and urgency of standardization needs, three years ago a national effort was initiated to get relevant people together and formulate a common standard for everybody to follow. This paper discusses the contents and related specifications of Urdu Zabta Takhti 1.01 in detail. The discussion is divided into subsections on logical groups of characters that form this takhti, Urdu text file format and how sorting may be done in Urdu with UZT.