On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 08:34:54AM -0700, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote: > On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:02:39 -0700, Khaled Hosny <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I'm not very fond if Scheherazade as it has many wrong glyphs (most of >> the Quranic glyphs are completely wrong) and it doesn't even have an الله >> ligature, which most Arabic users won't accept. > > There is a hadith > > لا يسقط الميسور بالمعسور > > Scheherazade is certainly not perfect -- and I doubt I'll ever use it > personally -- but it's the best freely available option we have. If I > understand the license correctly, we can rename it and turn it into a > project. You, Otared, and others are expressing the need for a standard, > default interface, so let's start with this and build on it. If there is > another pure opentype font that is better, let me know and I'll test it. > > The key point is that SIL has taken care to support nearly every > Arabic-script language, not just Arabic, so this gives us a platform that > all Arabic-script users can use by default until other free fonts -- or a > fork of Scheherazade -- become available.
I already have a fork, I just don't want to encourage people to use such aesthetically poor fonts, but as it seems to be the only solution at hand right now (especially the Unicode covering), I think I'll try to clean my font and publish it this week ISA. > > BTW: There is an الله lig in Scheherazade -- rather unattractive, but > it's there. Maybe you have an old version? Sorry, yes it has one but is no better than not having one at all. >> I was experimenting with >> a modified version that fixes those issues, but I gave up since the font >> lacks any contextual forms but the basic four ones and extending the >> font the way it is designed proved to be cumbersome and very error >> prone. > > I'm not sure if the VOLT sources are available, although I used a > font-to-volt script that seems to have captured nearly everything. I > guess you use FF but no matter: Just make a list of problems and the > minimal -- as opposed to ideal -- set of recommended changes and one or > both of us can work on this over the next few months. FF does a great job here, it does read all lookups that I don't need VOLT sources so much. >> If it is needed, I can clean the font and provide it to be included in >> the minimal distribution temporarily, as I hope that we'll have a viable >> alternative by the end of this year. > > See the above... make a list of errors in the font and we'll both work on > it one way or other. Back to Lotus: I suggest to you and Otared the > following project: develop Scheherazade into a free alternative to Lotus. > Lotus is that is as close to a pure OpenType font as we are going to > easily get. Although it supports less of Arabic-script unicode than > Scheherazade, it is a standard in the Arabic-script publishing world. So > if our default interface supports Lotus and Scheherazade out of the box, > we will be well on our way to what you guys are looking for. My initial idea was to extend Scheherazade in a similar way, but I gave up on this, there are so many similar glyphs in the Arabic Unicode block that a simple ligature like بي means 28 (Baa' forms) * 10 (Yaa' forms): 280 glyphs for one ligatures, I don't think this is a wise idea. Regards, Khaled -- Khaled Hosny Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team Free font developer
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