Not to disappoint any one, but I find the Arabic glyphs in FreeSans to ugly that I doubt any Arabic user will use it. I was aware of problems in FreeSans, and what prevented me from trying to fix it is my feeling that the glyphs doesn't worth the effort. I had a plan to submit new better Arabic glyphs, but I didn't even start drawing it yet and I'm not sure when I'll do. On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 10:55:11AM +0200, Steve White wrote: > Adnène (and arabeyes folks), > > On Feb 17, 2008 3:00 AM, Mohammed Adnène Trojette <adn+deb at diwi dot org> wrote: > > On Sat, Feb 16, 2008, Steve White wrote: > > > > > As Christian said, I am looking for somebody to help me with Arabic > > > support in Freefont. > > > Mostly, I need sound advice. > > > > First, thanks for working on the Arabic glyphs. > > Second, I will be happy to help you on this. But just in case, I think > > we should also add Cc: doc at arabeyes dot org so the Arabeyes people will be > > able to help. > > > OK! > > > > 1) Some glyphs seem to be missing, and there is some controversy, > > > concerning 'yeh' vs 'ʼalif maqṣūra'. > > > (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet). I played with > > > making my own medial 'yeh', but I'm not confident. > > ** Please look at that Wikipedia page, and tell me if it is accurate. > (And if it isn't, you might fix it!) > > > Just send me a screenshot and I'll tell you. Alif maqsura is just a Yeh > > without the dots, AFAIK. > > > I attach a screenshot of gedit displaying some mixed text at 16pt. > > It is my latest version of FreeSerif. It is different from the most > recent CVS in that: > > 1) the Arabic glyphs have been shifted down to share the baseline with > the Latin glyphs > 2) replacements as listed in the Wikipedia page mentioned above are applied > > I see immediately an issue with replacement of the character 'ي' (yeh). > > ** Are there any other replacement issues? > > There are a couple of difficulties with the character 'yeh' > > 1) This character appears on the Wikipedia page only without dots. > So something appears to be missing on that page. What else is > missing or wrong? > > 2) In FreeSerif, the range of replacements for yeh > U+FEF1 - U+FEF4 is missing. > So is the range U+FEEF - U+FEF0 for 'alef massura. > > I haven't yet made any changes to the glyph forms. > You can therefore look at your Linux distribution's copy of FreeFont, > to see what is wrong with the character ranges. > > I'm not confident that I could make a yeh-final glyph that is correct. > > > > 2) The whole glyph range is vertically offset by a large amount > > > relative to Latin glyphs, so that it looks poor when mixed with > > > Western text. > > > This is an easy fix, if one is sure of oneself. > > > > OK. > > > > > 3) I think the glyphs ar overall a bit big compared to the Latin ones. > > > Now, there are functions in FontForge to scale a range of glyphs, but > > > I really don't feel very confident about this. For one thing, there > > > are glyphs that are built from other glyphs. > > > > From what I remember when using freefont, the main problem was that the > > glyphs were small and the diacritics were too far from the glyphs. > > > ** Please give me an example of a character, where the diacritcs are > too far from the glyphs. > > To my eyes, the glyphs are very tall compared to the Latin ones (even > after I shifted them down to the baseline). The gedit program I used > for the attachment is just a text editor that uses the default > line-height of the font, which makes good sense for Latin, and which I > want to maintain. But you see the Arabic glyphs are colliding with > glyphs from previous lines. > > Now, the Arabic glyphs are of a rather lighter stroke than the Latin, > but then, Arabic is a denser script... To me, the combination isn't > too bad this way. But maybe if I were to scale the script, it would > be come really too light. > > > > 4) FreeMono and FreeSans don't have any Arabic. That's another job, though. > > > > > > Anyway, if you could find the time to have a look and advise me, I > > > will do the grunt work on this. > > > > > Cheers, all! > _______________________________________________ > Doc mailing list > Doc at arabeyes dot org > http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/doc -- Khaled Hosny
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