On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 10:04:21AM +0100, Bokverket wrote: > 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. > I'd suggest SIL's Scheherazade font[1] for you, or our Simplified Naskh font[2] which is based on the previous font, but addresses some issues in it, basically Simplified Naskh has larger glyphs and replaces some incorrect glyphs in Scheherazade font with correct one, though it is not released yet as there are few fixes that I want to do before an official release. > 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 totally agree with you, I'm in the process of including more fonts that are suitable normal and on screen usage. > 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. > I'm not sure what you are talking about here, as Arabeyes fonts in general has very few ligatures, may be you mean substitution tables for initial/medial/final forms? > 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. > The waw issue is due to lack of kerning, one could use simple techniques like decreasing the width of the waw making its tail extend out of its box, but this will interfere with dotted letters like beh or yeh. The other issues have been fixed now, thanks for reporting it. > 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. > Are you using <shaddah><fatha><fatha> or <shaddah><fathatan>? if the former, I doubt that the font could render it correctly, as this isn't a usual usage among Arabic users, but certainly this should be fixed. > 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... > I'd like to fix it, only if it is released under a free license. -- Khaled
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