Re: font used in text-intro-06-t

Cameron,

If you haven't already had this answered, yes it is correct that "the final
form lam-alef ligature is allowed to look like its isolated
cousin, just with the horizontal connecting bar to the right". This is a
matter of font style and glyph design. Different font designers use
different strategies in this regard.

The Andalus font is an instance of the Koufi (or Kufic) style, while Dinwani
Letter is an instance of the Diwani style. Both of these styles are used in
current print, but typically serve for special purposes. That is, they are
not typically used to write text for reading, but rather signs or ad copy.

I would suggest using Simplified Arabic (MSFT) or perhaps Lateef
or Scheherazade (SIL) for examples, which are all simplified forms of the
popular Naskh style often used in Arabic copy.

Regards,
Glenn

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 7:10 PM, Cameron McCormack <cam@mcc.id.au> wrote:

> text-intro-06-t specifies font-family="Andalus,Diwani Letter,serif".  To
> my untrained eye, it seemed like Firefox was failing.  The reference
> image (which was generated with Andalus) looks pretty different from the
> SVG rendering:
>
>  http://mcc.id.au/temp/text-intro-06-rendering.png
>
> My knowledge of Arabic script is very slight, so I don’t know whether
> the final form lam-alef ligature is allowed to look like its isolated
> cousin, just with the horizontal connecting bar to the right, or if it
> needs to be shaped like this one:
>
>  http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fefc/index.htm
>
> Diwani looks even more different.
>
> So I would like to change the test either to omit specific fonts, and
> just use whatever the system chooses for Arabic text (likely to be a
> more “normal” looking font than Andalus or Diwani) or to specify a
> different (free) font, like Scheherazade, in TTF/WOFF.
>
> Let me know if you agree.
>
> --
> Cameron McCormack ≝ http://mcc.id.au/
>
>