On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 11:42:41AM +0100, Hans Hagen wrote:
> Otared Kavian wrote:
>> Hi Hans, Khaled, and Idris,
>>
>> If a humble opinion from an ordinary user may be issued, I agree with  
>> Khaled that it would be extremely useful to have some basic default  
>> settings for Arabic fonts, and even more generally for any particular  
>> fonts used for other languages. This would not prevent those specialist 
>> typesetters who want particular features to be turned on, to do so  
>> through appropriate mechanisms.
>>
>> As a basic user I am frustrated when using mkiv, that most declaration  
>> of features are completely cryptic, and not being a specialist of OTF 
>> or other font specifications, I don't know which features are essential 
>> for writing and typesetting an article in Persian or any language using 
>> Arabic alphabet.
>> While the following is quite easy to understand and to use in XeConTeXt
>> %%%%%%%%%
>
> well, it might be easy to understand given that default features are  
> enabled but on the other hand,. when you want to disable a feature you  
> need to know what is enabled so in practice you have the same problem

Yes, but the majority if people want need that, if I want to play with
OpenType features then I'm supposed to know what I'm doing, while most
people will be happy with the default features (given it is a reasonable
default of course.)

[...]

> so, it seems to depend on calt but turning on calt by default is *not*  
> what the ms spec recommends for arabtype
>
> you see the problem?

I think is is arabtype's problem if they suggest turning calt off by
default, if I've contextual alternatives in my font this means I think
those alternatives are necessary to render text correctly, otherwise I
would have used a stylistic set.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localizer and member of Arabeyes.org team