On Fri, 2 Jan 2004, Behnam wrote: > Thank you Peter, > > The question I asked Neema presumed - wrongly - that everybody knows my > opinion! > Frankly I don't believe that creating Persian Nast'aaligh within normal > structure of the Arabic fonts is possible. I downloaded the font Connie > referred to and although I couldn't use it in a text file on my Mac, > but I could look at its characters in TypeTool and they do look pretty. > But when I imagine what they should look like in a text, I think they > will look beautiful as what they meant to be: Pakistani Nast'aaligh. > In order to even come close - and it will never be the real thing - to > Persian Nast'aaligh, you need not only the basic initial, medial, final > and isolated forms of the characters, but also several variation of > each form with different elevation and different expansion (maybe in > conjunction with different "kashidas") and an extraordinary complex > programing to contextualize these multitude of forms properly. It > requires someone who is as competent in Persian calligraphy as in > programing (and equally crazy to actually do it!) > It may be more appropriate to create a specialty word processor, as I > mentioned to Neema and I couldn't remember the name, for creating > Persian Nast'aaligh rather that putting all this programing effort in > one and only one font. > So I don't think the problem, as you mentioned to Connie, is reluctance > of Persian world against "difficult-to-read" Nast'aaligh. It's actually > the difficulty of creating it. In other word, it may be difficult to > read only if it's not the real thing.
Not quite true. Some random facts: 1. Pakistani Nastaligh is completely different from Persian one. Pakistani Nastaligh does fit in the normal font design practice that is done for Naskh. 2. Persian Nastaligh desktop publishing tools ARE available in market for at least five years now. They are extensively used in advertisements AND in books, included Persian Literature books in high schools. So the reason you don't see it in any book, is the difficulty to read it. Or if you prefer the rewording: that it reduces the speed of reading. It's not true with Pakistani Nastaligh. 3. And to disagree you completely ;-), Persian Nastaligh IS possible using advanced features of the Open Type spec. But to my best knowledge they are not implemented in any system yet. behdad > Regards, > Behnam _______________________________________________ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
