https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150481

--- Comment #22 from Eyal Rozenberg <[email protected]> ---
I've just noticed there are a bunch of potentially usable fonts at Google's
font website:

https://fonts.google.com/?subset=arabic&noto.script=Arab

There are lots of candidates there which are not-ridiculous choices for the
title font, and a few which may work as body font, including some we've
mentioned, like Noto Naskh and Amiri, but also Lateef, Mirza and Scheherazade.
If you don't know those, please check them out.


(In reply to Munzir Taha from comment #19)
> Salaam, another native Arabic user opinion on LibreOffice on Linux
> specifically. I very much appreciate all your efforts so don't take any
> disagreement as personal.

Indeed, we are all in this together, trying to make LibreOffice better,
especially for the novice users, who are more likely to just stick to the
default choice of fonts we set for them.

> First, I am strongly against adding fonts in LibreOffice or any application
> for people to use. LibO should only include a font which is essential for
> its internal working or templates if there is such a thing. Mostly, that's
> unnecessary and it's enough to use generic names like sans, serif, mono, ....

While I can appreciate the aesthetic of your position, it is outside the scope
of this bug. This bug is about setting (and possibly bundling) a default
Arabic, and Farsi fonts. It is not about the decision of whether to make such
language-specific font choices in LO in general. Such choices are made for all
languages. For many languages, the choice is well-thought-out, possibly with a
relevant font bundled to ensure it is available: English (and other
Latin-alphabet languages), Hebrew, and probably others. (It's actually
interesting to ask the CJK folks what they did with their default font
choices.) For Arabic and for Farsi, what we currently have is just some
afterthought of a default, and this is what this bug is out to improve. Your
claim/suggestion/demand belongs in a separate bug report. If you file it, mark
this one as a "related" bug so that we can notice it here. 

I have more to say about this subject but I won't start the discussion on its
merits here. I will say, though, which is that the choice of a default font
does not prevent users from selecting their own fonts; and that a user who is
proficient enough to customize their OS' choices of fonts will certainly be
able to choose their own combinations of fonts in LibreOffice as well. Thus,
regardless of whether your suggestion should or should not be adopted, I don't
believe that setting a more decent choice of default fonts for Arabic and Farsi
would hurt any users or even badly inconvenience them.

Also, for comparison, you may be interested in the discussion we had about the
choice of defaults for Hebrew (bug 113538), where this question also came up to
some extent.

> Currently, the situation, the experience and the tools
> are much better so no need to waste time reviving them and I definitely
> agree with you to drop them, but also the rest.
> ...
> none of the fonts here are good enough for
> any serious publishing but that is another story. 

Can you share your experience regarding which newer/better-maintained fonts are
available today, which would be a better fit? I realize that you might not be
motivated to do this because of your objection in principle, but in parallel to
considering your suggestion in principle, this process is also going on.

> Because LibO still has some serious and annoying issues. 
> ... we need to
> work on these issues before people would take it seriously. Someone should
> hire Khaled Hosney for a 1-year contract full time and he can fix them all
> inshallah ;)

Munzir - perhaps you might consider joining the Arabic-language Telegram
channel, for more general and less bug-specific discussion of the important
issues you bring up (the discussion there can also happen in Arabic of course,
although when I reply it's generally in English)  :
https://t.me/+UHz-eKUtVb52P0Kr

I could definitely have used your input before this recent LOcon on these
subjects...

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