Re: Quran fonts

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Salaam Mohammed and others,

God willing I will tentatively volunteer for updating
quran_ar.xml. At the moment, I am somewhat busy but I
definitely want to get my hands on this eventually.
Also I need some time to get familiar with the keymap
and the special characters used in Quran mushafs.

I cross-checked a couple of verses from the image you
sent with traditional mushaf. Mashallah I didn't see
any deviation. Good transcribing work and good font.

I have a question about this font though. Does this
font handle the lam-hamza-alef sequence of characters
correctly?

I would like to give you an example. In the
traditional Quran mushafs when
you have a Lam And Alef together, it is rendered like
this as we know:

 \  /
  \/
  /\
  \/
Figure 1

There is sometimes this sequence of
characters: Lam-Hamza-Alif
In such a case, the Lam and Alif are still rendered
the way they would be had there not been a hamza
inbetween, and the hamza is simply put above the alef
and lam in a floating position which looks kind of
like this:

  c 
 \  /
  \/
  /\
  \/
Figure 2

Note that this is different than the case as
illustrated in Figure 3 where the hamza is directly
above the alef and not "in between" lam and alef. 

c 
 \  /
  \/
  /\
  \/
Figure 3

So there is a subtle difference that the hamza is not
directly above the alef but rather in between the alef
and the lam. 

I'd like to give you specific examples in the Quran
where there is a
LAM-HAMZA-ALEF sequence of letters. Two examples are 
"Al-Aakhiret" and "L-aayat". I'm attaching an image of
verse 2:248 from the Quran where the word "Aayat" is
used both as it is and another time with a Lam in
the front of it, as "Laayat". Please look at the 
attached image named "2_248.gif".

In this verse 2:248, you will see that the fifth word
from the beginning is "Aayat". Here the word starts
with a stand-alone hamza and then an alef. And the
sixth word from the end is "Laayat". Here there is a
Lam, a Hamza, and then an Alef. When there is a
Lam-Hamza-Alef sequence of letters, it is written like
this:

    |
\ C |
 \  )
  \/
  /\
  \/

This is demonstrated in the word "L-A-A-Y-A-T" in
verse 2:248 (sixth word from the end of the verse).
Please contrast this with the fifth word from the
beginning in this verse that is "Aayat". When you put
the Lam in from of Ayat, the rendering totally changes
and Lam and Alef connect to each other even if there
is a hamza between them. The hamza is simply put in
between them in a floating position. This is very
different than the
situation where the hamza is directly above the alef
in a
Lam-Alef(with a hamza above) combination. The hamza in
"Laayat" is not
above Alef, it is a stand-alone hamza of its own
right. Therefore I feel that this should be encoded as
0621 and rendered as seen in this Laayat example.

Do you know if this font handles this case correctly?

Peace,
Mete

--- Mohammed Yousif <mhdyousif at gmx dot net> wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 August 2003 04:59, Mete Kural wrote:
> > I think an Othmany font is necessary for a Quran
> > bundle. Is there a link to download this Othmany
> font?
> > How can we examine it?
> >
> > -Mete
> >
> 
>  Here is a screenshot of QtQuran 0.09 running this
> font
>  with a _complete_ othmany text of one chapter (The
> only
>  one I finished updating from a mushaf).
>   
>
http://mhdyousif.hypermart.net/quran/qtquran-0.09.jpg
> 
>  Please, could anyone volunteers to update
> quran.ar.xml from
>  a mushaf using that font?
>  The process is quite easy, just open any editor and
> choose that font
>  and if you want, I can set you a keymap with all
> the symbols so
>  you just:
>    + open quran.ar.xml and open a mushaf (of course
> ;-)
>    + switch the keymap to the quranic one (which I
> will provide you with)
>    + get used to the keymap by pressing all the
> buttons on your keyboard.
>    + update the verses with the variuos quranic
> symbols and fix any typos
>       you may find and remove any un-needed
> characters (like Alef-Mad which
>       in some cases should be substituted by a
> Quranic symbol).
>    + commit to cvs or send it to me.
>   Anyone? please help spread Islam!
> 
> -- 
> Mohammed Yousif
> "Ich liebe ihr, weil ohne sie kann ich nicht bin!"
> We _will_ restore OUR Jerusalem.
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