A good vocalized font for non-Arab speakers

["Bokverket" <bokverket at hotmail dot com>]

Hello,

I am a publisher and I have been looking for some time for an Arabic font to 
publish texts for beginning learners of Arabic, for example a beginner's 
Swedish--Arabic--Swedish dictionary. These have to be fully vocalized and 
easily readable -- like when you yourselves started to write :-)  The 
previous free fonts that I have checked do a horrible job with the 
diacritics, as I am sure you know.

So naturally I was very excited when I found the announcement on Arabeyes 
that you had done just that. I have looked at many of them, and to my 
greater and greater disappointment they were either adaptions of common 
newsprint typefaces or art-forms of varius kinds.  I may have missed out 
(please correct me), but not many seemed to be well suited for running text 
even (like books or in magazines). They were more for headings, shop signs 
etc. Finally I came upon AlMohanad which was the only one that might fit.

I am very much aware of the impressive job that has been done to prepare the 
ligature tables for all combinations, and I am a little surprised that not 
much comment has been seen on this list. Is it the right place?  One would 
hope that the work with the ligature tables could be re-used by the 
individual font designer, but there are traps. For instance, one font with 
very long fathas has them running into the next letter.

For AlMohanad, I wonder about the distance after initial and medial waw. It 
is as big, maybe even bigger optically, than a word space. Confusing for 
beginners. The dagger over a shadda, as in God's name, is very small. The 
fatha over shadda is placed way too high, no feeling of contact between 
them,  kasra below shadda is well done.

For other fonts, Mashq, Tholoth, AlArabiya and possibly others have problems 
with ha fatha shadda fatha *followed by* tha fatha. The shadda runs into the 
second fatha. The shadda seems to be placed way to high, even if not 
followed by s "sensitive" letter.  The dagger sign disappears over a shadda.

I wonder if someone could take a font such as Bitstream Cyberbase and 
improve it with your diacritics tables. That font really looks very clear 
for beginners. If only the Latin letters would be lined up with the Arabic 
ones...

Best,

Goran