Re: [css3-fonts] Arabic and generic families

On 14/05/13 6:07 AM, fantasai wrote:

> Though I'm not sure I agree that DecoType Naskh would be 'serif'
> rather than 'cursive'--it is very calligraphic, more like Zapfino
> than Times Roman.

DecoType's Naskh is an implementation of the standard Arabic formal book 
hand, so it is by far the most obvious example of something that 
corresponds to 'serif' in Latin type categorisation and conventional 
usage. It is important to consider the rôles of different script styles 
within text cultures, rather than extrapolating from an outsider 
perception of the visual characteristics of a style. While the naskh 
style might look to us more like Zapfino than it does like Times Roman, 
for hundreds of years it performed the same rôle in Arabic text culture 
as formal roman styles in European text culture.

JH

Received on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 17:10:17 UTC