On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:02:58 -0700, Khaled Hosny <khaledho...@eglug.org>
wrote:
Microsoft's OpenType features list page
(http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/features_ae.htm) gives a
"UI
suggestion" for each feature noting if it should be on by default, I
think those are what most OpenType enable by default (at least the
ones
I tested).
i've been thinking of a features=default option (as there is already
features=yes|no)
Maybe we can have a features=ms_arabic
instead of defaulting to MS' recommendation. So in the final high-end
user interface we can have keys like
featureset=ms_arabic
I think the 'ms' part is't really needed, we can just call it"arabic",
or are we going to have more Arabic feature sets?
We are almost certainly going to have more :-)
But I agree with Hans that this is a matter that needs more thought. For
example, Traditional Arabic mixes OpenType and older M$ specs in
Uniscribe, so just plugging in the default features that M$ suggests is
not sufficient for, eg, vowel function in Tr Ar.
That is beyond OpenType support, since Traditional Arabic is essentially
broken at many levels, even when Uniscribe is used (vowel marks break
lam-alef ligatures for example), Ms Arabic fonts are special case since
they were developed long ago before OpenType and aren't the best
examples.
OTOH there are a lot of arabic fonts like this around that we want to
support as well if we can... We a font categorization scheme to fit the
most used fonts in the this regard.
Also, what about Arabic
fonts on the mac, so they follow the same specs as M$?
AFAIK, Microsoft's Uniscribe is the reference OpenType implementation,
and I assume that Apple's OpenType implementation follows its
recommendations (I can't test that).
This is something we should investigate... uniscribe is quirky in a few
areas -- it does extra spell-checking beyond what Arabic actually needs,
for example. That's one reason I'm not comfortable with using it as a
default standard.
Khaled: Have you considered making an inventory of available Arabic fonts?
Or does one already exist? We could put together a table of what's
available, checking for available OT features, etc.
سلام
Idris
--
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Shi`i Studies
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
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