Re: Making necessary OpenType features on by default

[Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny@eglug.org>]

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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 <khaledhosny@eglug.org>  
> 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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