Malay's Jawi Script & other extended arabic

[Hasbullah Bin Pit <sebol at ikhlas dot com>]

Assalamualaikum

I'm Hasbullah Bin Pit from Malaysia, doing a lots of Malay l10n stuff
I think Arafat Madeni knows me.

Introduction for Malay
Malay is Native language for large population in Malaysia.
Current Malay is written in roman. Before this Malay was
written in Jawi Script, a script that derived from arabic.
Malay writing in Jawi is still being use by some people
esp in Islamic education.

to summarize, Malay can be write on roman and jawi script
(derived from arabic)

Jawi Script contained extra 6 character from arabic character.
refer 
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=3632705&forum_id=10215
OR http://gabai.sourceforge.net/pix/jawi.jpg

چ ڠ ڨ ڽۏ

I cant display "Ga" because of it's not supported yet by unicode & no 
font for it yet.

The shape is same with original arab letter but it just contained with 
extra dots.

The problem of Jawi Script.
---------------------------
one big problem of jawi script is some of the char is not suppoterd by 
unicode. last time only Ca ( چ ) was supported. Later, all extra char is 
supported except Ga (Kaf with a dot above).
Now Ga is proposed official to unicode & InsyaAllah it will be added.

Fonts
-----
The next step is font for those extra Char.
Font that's design to support full unicode char might support it.
But others not.

If we design our own font to support jawi script, it'll be considered as 
reinventing the wheel.
of course jawi font will contained with arabic font too.

What's come to my mind is font from Arabeyes. I've tested
ae_fonts1_ttf_1.0.tar.bz2 and Kacst* , most of it doesnt contained with 
extra jawi char.

So, I'm proposing Khotot project to include entry Jawi extra char in the 
future. It's just extra dots, extra line, placement of dot.

Why jawi font only? I'm thinking for other arabic derived char too.
There are several script derived from arabic used all arround the globe.
Jawi script, Maghribian arabic, tunisian arabic, Persian etc.
we call it "extended arabic char" from range U+066E to U+06FF

to simplify what's I'm saying is
"Suggest to include extended arabic char in Arabeyes's font"


I'm not yes familiar with font etc, can u guy suggest some tool to edit 
or view fonts?


--
Hasbullah Bin Pit (sebol)

"Fiber optic tu kecik, kalau kita letak high speed internet 312 Kbps tu,
 nanti fiber tu pecah." -  1-300-88-9515