> So, if I flatten a curve a little or round it a bit more for it to fit the general design of this font, could it result in something awful?

@ Screw it the way you like!
http://typophile.com/node/28634#comment-161482

Explore more by clicking on these images:
http://www.maryamsoft.com/FontShop/

Regards with Flowers
http://typophile.com/node/112936
http://pressedflowers.weebly.com/khat-and-pressed-flowers.html

Thanks a lot AzizMostafa! I feel more confident now. :)

Unless you have an "allah" glyph that looks intentionally offensive, don't worry one bit. On the other hand there are certainly a multitude of ways of producing an Arabic font that's just plain bad. :-)

hhp

Wait, what??

I simply meant that it's hard to make a good Arabic font; most people who don't parrot precedent fail. This is especially true for somebody who didn't grow up exposed to it.

What does yours look like?

hhp

Hrant > Unless you have an "allah" glyph that looks intentionally offensive...

@ There will be no sin upon you for any mistake that you may make therein, barring what yours heart may premeditate. God (Allah) is All-forgiving, All-merciful.
http://ysfq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1765782582010111842511942/
http://ysfq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1765782582010111842656496/

But in any belief system there are people looking for a fight.

hhp

It looks like this:

It's looking like you're trying to match some Latin font's x-height? FWIW that happens to be something yours truly has railed against since the late 90s. :-) Although certainly not something broadly "offensive".

hhp

Well, the only thing that matches the latin range of the font is the baseline and the caps height. I used different heights loop height, tooth height, descender 1 and descender 2. Maybe looks like that because it's out of context without the latin letters in the image. Anyway, I hope someone likes it when it's finished. Thanks for your comments =)

Yes, I was having to imagine the context.

What are you matching to the Latin cap height?

hhp

Aristarco> Anyway, I hope someone likes it when it's finished...

@ Promising Mexico Creativity! I like those talking letters and love to see more.
@ God bless your clicking finger and all the best.

hrant > But in any belief system there are people looking for a fight.

@ And in my belief system too! (Every time they ignite the flames of war, Allah puts them out. They seek to cause corruption on the earth, and Allah does not like the agents of corruption).

Yes, in any belief system. As in: in any belief system. To put it another way: in any belief system.

hhp

Latin caps height is matched to the upper part of alef.

AzizMostafa: Thank you for your kind words. I want to finish this and show it to the world so you all can tell me if it needs corrections, which I'd gladly do. :)

Aristarco> I want to finish this and show it to the world

@ Showing it to the WORLD will make every one happy, but might make you regret later, unless you dream of NOTHING else in return. The WORLD is MERCILESS!

Aristarco > So you all can tell me if it needs corrections, which I'd gladly do. :)

@ At your service, and if interested, we can work together to add it to QB
http://typophile.com/files/QB-English_1.pdf as well as to our list of the newly developed Arabic Web Fonts that work more or less like rechargeable skyfonts http://www.fonts.com/browse/font-tools/skyfonts
By the way, what name have you given your nice-looking font?
Regards with Flowers

I think my reply didn't enter the system! The name for the font is StarCo Round Regular. :)

Ok, here I go... please, don't be so hard at judging it. Consider I do not speak, write or understand arabic. I've consulted sources and I found this is a possibility...

Also, if I did anything wrong and this is disrespectful, please accept my apologies. I'll correct it right away.

Also, I did this because of a pic I found on the internet where a person is facing a wall with a giant inscription. Again, I dunno if it is correct. If not, I'll stick to the first one I posted.

Oh, about the first, I decided to make the diacritics a bit thinner:

I think it looks better this way.

Aristarco > ... I decided to make the diacritics a bit thinner

StarCo looks even better if you make (a) smaller, or replace it with that flower?! alll=@lll

All three shapes are beautiful and correct.
The larger medial black and white image should have a small straight line over the diacritic mark as in the other two images though it is not necessary but it will make the word shaping perfect and you will observe the same shaping in almost all Arabic fonts. Yes, in the same medial image, the second diacritic like shape is not necessary as it is also not present in the other images. It is not a mark, but the isolated shape of the same last letter of the word, above which it is made. You may use it or remove it according to the need of design.

Ok, I made the final heh (is that the name?) smaller. I just don't know how much smaller is better so I made it a fraction of the loop height.

Zuhair Albazi: Thank you for your comments! I thought of that second form because I saw this pic:

and I liked it. I might include it as an alternate. For the time being I think I'll include the one shown in the small magenta tile as default.

Thank you both for being so understanding and kind!

Here are my heh variants. I hope they are ok. Or at least, not that bad, =)

Greetings!

It works, I think...

I think I've finished the arabic block. I'll move to the other blocks while I wait for your opinions. :)

L, K, La @ alll are beautful, but...
1. Are those 4-digit numbers equal?!
Wonder how 0123456789, 9876543210 and 024861793 will look like?!
2. Why Heh's petals are made spiky?! Why not closer to a, @, 8 or &?!
3. Is that غغغ or غفغ?!

I, you, what? Lemme organize my ideas and I'll answer. I felt like a student in a surprise examination. Heheh :)

Ok, I'll try and answer.
1. The digits are shown with the urdu language and with the 'locl' feature activated. The locl feature is as follows*:
feature locl { # Localized Forms
script arab; # Arabic
language URD exclude_dflt; # Urdu
lookupflag RightToLeft;
sub [afii57396 afii57397 afii57399 uni06F4] by [uniE864 uni06F5 uniE867 uniE864];
sub [uni06F6 uni06F7] by [afii57398 uniE867];
language FAR exclude_dflt; # Farsi
lookupflag RightToLeft;
sub [afii57396 afii57397 afii57398] by [uni06F4 uni06F5 uni06F6];
} locl;
For the number sequences you mention, I took this pic but I think it doesn't fit in the thread. Anyway, here it is:

2. Heh's petals** are spiky because... I dunno. I made it like that with no knowledge about how it should be drawn. Um... is it better if I draw it like the final form? I included an 'a' next to a heh in the image.
3. That's a triple غ to test the 'init', 'medi' and 'fina' features. I included a triple ف for comparison.

:( I hope it's just a matter of corrections and I hadn't offended anyone. I apologize in advance.
___________
* I must admit I copied this feature from another font as I'm not familiar with arabic, as I mentioned before.
** I asume 'petal' means the form of the heh. Oh God, I am so ignorant in this matter. :(

Why would anyone be offended? Designing a typeface for a writing system you don't read regularly if is not impossible, is not easy. Personally I think some of the numbers are illegible like «۳» and «۲». The loop in medial and final variations of letter «غ» are very similar to the letter «ف» and could be easily mistaken by each other. I didn't want to comment because the style doesn't attract me, but hey, that's just me. :)

Thank you, Bahman Eslami. Please tell me, how can I make legible those numbers? Should I make the superior arcs larger? I mean, those that look like a small 'w' and 'u' to me? You are right on the loops of those letters (غ and ف) and I'll do corrections to them. I started doing this typeface because of the latin portion, of course. I just wanted to include more unicode ranges so more people could use it, should they like the style.
Thanks again for your comments.

I think enlarging the upper part of the numbers would improve legibility. Good luck.

How about this?

I thought of these variants:

To avoid confusion with:

Make the top of the medial "غ" angular.

hhp

1. Make 7 (flipped 8) closer to V than U, as in http://typophile.com/files/YS-Aziz.pdf.
2. To distinguish between the two, make F like an egg, and Gh like a spinning top.
Good luck

I'm with Hrant on «غ».

B

I've made these variations. I have to leave this for a while since I have to work on another project but I'll be returning often. Thanks for all your comments!

Thumbs up!

I tested the font a bit...

I took the paragraph from Wikipedia.

The spacing is uneven, and in spots way too tight.

hhp

Dear Aristarco ,
1. For your font, I recommend the Maghribi style of @:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/maghribifonts/files/Font%20Maghribi%20Ma...

2. Kill the spaces after R @ Z as explained here:
http://typophile.com/node/19609

3. Shorten the initial F @ Q.

4. Add half space after LA (=( L+Alif)

More later

Aziz, thanks for your advice, I'll adjust and retry. I will sound terribly ignorant but, what do you mean by @? Is it the ھ ? Or is it every letter that looks like the "@"?
Thanks again for the advice! I'm reading and trying to understand how to apply it to the font.

> Is it the ھ ?

@ Yes it is the flower-like letter.

You may find it helpful to review my font Shilia which has similar forms to your design:
http://www.sakkal.com/type/shilia.html

Good luck

Mamoun, your font is gorgeous! Thanks for the link. I will gladly review it. Thanks again.

Thank you.

Make sure to review the brochure since it includes much information about the typeface's extensive OpenType features:
http://issuu.com/linotype/docs/shilia_brochure/1

Best wishes.

I agree - Mamoun's font is gorgeous.

Now let me preach my usual sermon: More than half of the Arabic letters rely on dots to differentiate them from others with a similar base outline. In my own fonts, and despite some early criticism, I use larger-than-usual dots, and for the sake of legibility would advise Aristarco to double the size of the dots in his nice-looking font! The very large zero dot in the numerals is necessary for the same reason, but the letter dots can be a bit smaller.

Best wishes

I use larger-than-usual dots

I do the same in Latin! And when another type designer says "your tittle is slightly too large", I know I've done it right. :-> The "i" needs all the help it can get. Now, if we could only help the village idiot that is the lc "el"...

hhp

Thanks for your advice, Vladimir Tamari!
Thanks to you all for your tips, suggestions and advice. I'm learning a lot from all of it.

You are welcome Aristarco.
Good to hear that hrant. As for the little i, have you heard of the real-life tragedy of the dotless i ? .

Ah yes, that's one of my "favorite" font stories.

hhp

Wait, what?? I've just read the story. That's terrifying! Never heard it before but that's more or less why I started this thread. Since I don't read nor speak arabic, I was afraid to cause some unintended rage out there.

Well, unlike words, shapes very rarely have literal meanings (especially letterforms, which are "reserved" for sense-free atoms) so it would be very hard for you to call somebody a whore with a font...

On the other hand, here's a true story: I once opined –on a private discussion forum– that a fellow list-member who was making an old-fashioned Arabic font was holding back Arabs. This was around when Pim Fortuyn* –an anti-Islam figure– was assassinated... So I got an email from the list administrator that I was endangering that guy's life, and was expelled from the forum! But 27 emails of support later I was let back in.

* Or maybe it was Theo van Gogh.

hhp

Wow! That was harsh! Sometimes people put one's opinions out of context and it escalates like the dotless-i story. I hear from time to time (specially in mexican (always awful) soap-operas -I'm mexican by the way-) that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think opinions taken out of context are used as crack fillers in that paved road...

Ok, I'm having some free time between projects so I'll try and modify my glyphs with the suggestions you all gave me so kindly. Before doing so, here is an image I found at the interwebs and modified to put my glyphs and memorize their names.

Aristarco - Viva Mexico ! As to your font stop worrying - nothing in your designs can offend anybody - just ask yourself : What would Cantinflas have done if someone accused him of having a hidden meaning in the shape of his moustache?"

Vladimir: Hahahahah!!! Good one!! He might have answered as he usually did: "Well, if you look at it that- because, that- now that if you say 'no, well, if-' but, no, I think like they say, because they say it and say it often- would you-? would I-? no, of course not, but- you get it?" Hahahah!
As for the bigger dots, I made them bigger but a bit smaller than a zero dot. My zero dot is 130pt and the old dots were 50pt, so I made them 80pt. This is a test. They look... a bit too big, don't they? Mmh...

Anti-Hitler! ;-)

hhp

Aristarco yes that is exactly what C would have said haha judging from the gibberish I heard, without understanding a word, in one of his movies.
Good one hrant - negative space as a political statement!
The new dots do not look too big to me at all - look at my logo where the dot on the Dad is a bit too big. As you know in classical calligraphy the dot is a square drawn with the slant of the nib. Here is my study of how a 45 degree nib would produce a square dot, and how circling the square (!) would result in a choice of circles. I chose the largest whose diameter is double the line width. Legibility would demand an even bigger circle than that. And if the slant is more than 45 degrees the circumscribed circle would be larger still compared to the verticals, but nearer the horizontal width.

I recommend:
1. Shaped dots: circle for 1 , rounded rectangle for 2 @ triangle for 3.
2. Mexican Kaf like mother embracing her child.
3. Humble (not high-nosed) Dad @ Sad

Good luck

Aziz
Nice anthropomorphic type advice: nose, child, mother. That kaf is lovely.
I used the circle-square-triangle scheme in an unreleased display font project - its a decorative idea and relates to the ruq'a script 'dots' where a dot, a line and and two lines connected at an angle have the same function.
The only problem with an unfilled circle for a dot is when the font has diacritical marks where the sukun mark is also a circle.

> The only problem with an unfilled circle for a dot is when the font has diacritical marks where the sukun mark is also a circle.

@ I do not think anybody is going to use diacritics with StarCoRoundAlphabet. It is more decorative than functional. Anyhow:
1. Sukun can be made like (>) as in http://typophile.com/node/115169
2. Three dots can be made like (^)

I was about to say the same about the sukun mark. Still, I think I'll keep the dots. About the anthropomorphic type advice, I found that nice, too. Gave me another way to look at the glyphs. Deeper, I'd say.
One question: I've seen the Arabic Presentation Forms A has 611 code points, most of them ligatures. Is this block heavily required? I really feel it'd take an eternity to fill, heheh. I'd like to know if it is quite necessary so I better get started. Also I have to code the subs for all those ligatures. Are they really used? I've already made all the initial, medial, final and isolated glyphs of this block, except for the ligatures. Well, I did FDF2 only.

> Also I have to code the subs for all those ligatures. Are they really used?

@ No more ligatures is necessary, but the final joining duck-like Yeh is preferred to be neck-less.

No ligatures are needed for your stylised decorative font. Look at the fonts of arabetics only one or two shapes for each letter for all positions - yet he makes his fonts work rather well. Of course I am by no means advocating using this "unified Arabic" for all fonts - the genius of Arabic is in its calligraphic flow - and you have captured some of that spirit in your font.

Actually I think the hidden genius of Arabic will be proven once it sheds calligraphy.

Also, ligatures can be much more than decoration.

hhp

I am not sure what you mean hrant. Cursive flow of Arabic line, whether traditional or modern, gives each word an individual unique shape, much more so than in Latin type, for example. I consider that a plus for legibility and a lively appearance. So yes ligatures are just letters flowing into each other, and the eye catches the meaning immediately. As in Chinese characters.

I believe the "flow" you speak of is ideally detached from marking the black with the hand; that would remove an arbitrary barrier towards the ideal expression of notan.

Arabic does indeed have a readability advantage over Latin (although its legibility is lower), and ligation is part of that. But calligraphic flow now impedes the ideal progress of Arabic.

hhp

"I do not think anybody is going to use diacritics with StarCoRoundAlphabet. It is more decorative than functional."
Ouch, AzizMostafa!!
(just kidding)
Yes, I started this font as a decorative one. In fact, I've been testing time and time again and found it works best at sizes 32pt and up. I just wanted to make it more... "complete" than the average free-fonts you find in the interwebs.

", but the final joining duck-like Yeh is preferred to be neck-less."
Wait, whaaaat? Uh-oh...

hrant you seem to have experience and interesting ideas about Arabic typography. It will be great if you can publish a short illustrated text explaining the terms and ideas you outlined above. What in your view is the ideal progress of Arabic typography? Thanks.

My experience in Arabic is limited to having what I call "nativity" in it (I grew up –mostly– in Lebanon) and having made a couple of entirely unremarkable revivals. But my ideas of typographic progress –in any script– have been maturing for almost twenty years, and I'm now very sure that marking the black pulls towards form and away from function; calligraphy creates beautiful men and women that you shouldn't marry.

Sadly I'm notoriously prone to favoring ideas over production, so I can't actually show anything.... yet. It seems I'm waiting for something to change in my life. I hope that doesn't mean all my kids leaving home, because that's at least 14 years away! :-/

hhp

Thanks I lived in Beirut in the 60's and 'modern' typography was non-existant then, and I had definite ideas where it should be heading - a sans-serif sort of generic font to start with (hence my AlQuds lettering and now fonts). The sans-serification of scripts all over the world is a real phenomena and a good one and it happened to Japanese, Thai, etc. Since then a whole generation of typographers were educated also in Beirut, (cutting and pasting Latin letters as I heard to create Arabic letters as a design excercise). So a sort of Latinized Arabic with little regard for what I consider the traditional essence of the letter shapes is now fashionable. The result are now elegant professional fonts where the letter shapes are too much alike the medial ha same as the dal for example.

Anyway what is "marking the black" ? Congratulations on a home full of young kids - that is the best! And as my daughter keeps telling me "be responsible for your actions" so it is up to to you to change enough to apply your ideas. Good luck!

The problem of Latinization is very big concern of mine, especially for Armenian.

"Marking the black" is my way of referring to rendering the bodies of the letters as opposed to the rendering the black/white border (although sometimes the former poses as the latter). To me the white cannot fully take part in the act of reading when marking the black, no matter how sensitively it's done.

Yes, I do need to change, instead of wait.

hhp

In Arabic Latinization takes the form of mimicking the x-height, and of using as few basic shapes as possible. How is the situatuon in Armenian in which the letters are not connected? I find it remarkable that the Armenian alphabet was invented by one priest from scratch, if I remember correctly, rather than develop incrementally. And he did not choose to imitate Greek or Latin!

Hmm I can understand the concept of letter shape and the negative shape (the background). But how can you change the 'black' without changing the border? Doesn't the outline define the body and vice versa in complementary ways?

An inflated "tooth" area (which I call "x-height envy" :-) and reduction of shape variations are two big symptoms of the disease of Latinized Arabic, but there are others... The good news is that when Arabic is Latinized it's usually very obvious, hence easy to combat; Armenian is much closer to Latin in many ways, so the damage is less but it's also harder to fight... The two big symptoms are an inflated "x-height" and too many serifs.

Concerning the invention of Armenian, the only formal account we have comes from Mesrop Mashdots's star student, Goryune (which BTW is the name my wife and I gave our middle son :-) but he's relatively clear: Mashdots was commissioned by King Vramshabouh (oh, our youngest son's name is Vram :-) to invent the alphabet in order to combat cultural assimilation. This is why Mashdots did not base the Armenian alphabet on existing scripts. However the scribes who ended up writing in the new script were used to Greek, so they made it more like Greek. But, a caveat: I wasn't there.

--

The reason marking the black cannot yield an optimal black/white relationship is that it forces a relationship between the two edges of the black; so no matter how much you want to respect the white, you cannot do so optimally. The parallel I like to draw is with Jefferson and Sally Hemmings: he loved her, but she was still a slave.

hhp

I am glad we are on the same page regarding Arabic Latinization - see the cartoon I made regarding the regimental adaptation of Arabic to x- height rules: http://typophile.com/node/50960 What you said about it being obvious is true, but people are generally lazy and do not make the effort to see critically...

That is great you gave your sons historical names related to Armenian script! May they carry the tradition so far from Ararat! Apologies to Aristarco for monopolising his page for a private conversation!

I think I get what you are saying... the background is unimportant compared to the actual letter shape...but the background becomes more important as the font gets fatter and takes up most of the space!

All the best
Vladimir

Yes, that was a great cartoon!
On the other hand, and especially for diasporans (something Armenians for one have more than they have "natives") sticking to precedent is just as dangerous because it makes the younger generation –our future– see their mother script as a museum item.

people are generally lazy and do not make the effort to see critically...

I don't mind when laymen are "lazy" – in a way that's what makes text face design so interesting in fact; it's when type designers ignore the problem –or even celebrate it– that I get upset.

hhp

"Apologies to Aristarco for monopolising his page for a private conversation!"
What!? No! I'm learning a lot, A LOT from this conversation. And I'm avid of learning as I've always been. I've always loved typography but, as an engineer, I had paid little attention to the process of creation and origins. When I started working on an electronic display, I wanted to make something beyond the common 7-segment or 16-segment display and didn't want to go the dot-matrix way. I imagined a more "designed display" to show numbers with more quality, yet keeping the 16-segment approach, and so StarCo Round started to form in my mind. When I started the font I wanted to learn more about typography and here I am, trying to absorb every detail and all the data I can. So interesting and fascinating! And reading your posts helps me in that search for knowledge. So, no apologies needed! Au contraire, thank you for sharing your thoughts!

"x-height envy", good term. Maybe this approach in Arabic script to enlarge everything in the middle to mimic texture of Latin script is wearing off. If anyone is so interested in Latin latter shapes that they want emulate it in Arabic script why would they want to design in arabic, they could relinquish it for Latin. They can express this passion in Latin script and never look back. I would say please leave this script alone!
Today the problem is that this Latinized Arabic has become so ubiquitous that the damage is probably is too big to be fixed. I can see it everywhere and it's because of the market. It seems that arab clients want more western appearance than original or arabic appearance. If they want it to look original, they use calligraphy which is corny and if they want it to look modern they use this Latinized Arabic style. Maybe first culture should be changed before typefaces!

Bahman

why would they want to design in arabic

They think they're bringing Arabic into the "modern world"...

Type design is part of culture of course. But those clients you mention don't want culture, they just want the money. So we have a responsibility to bring money down from its throne and change culture via our typefaces. And not only by making better typefaces, but by convincing our users that it's a good idea.

hhp

Bahman Eslami > Maybe first culture should be changed before typefaces!

@ Why not identify ourselves with one another?! http://typophile.com/node/74436
Will Mei Hei change the culture of Chinese to Western or the Western to Chinese?!
http://www.yan-yehying.com/projects/typography/typography.html
Or StarCoRoundAlphabet will change the culture of Arabs to Mexican?!

May Allah bless Aristarco's fingers for pleasing Arabs @ non-Arabs.

@Bahman Eslami - I live in Japan so only see those x-rated Arabic fonts only through images. However I notice the damage seems to be limited to display fonts, advertising and so forth. For body text it seems the norm is the good old naskh-type fonts variations. That is lucky for me because soon I will be releasing my AlQuds OT families that look 'modern' while retaining the essential generic shapes gleaned from many styles of calligraphy, children's writing and my own design sense hopefully a font to be read rather than flout its own fancy features.

@hrant - your "tooth height x-height envy" literally saved my fonts from being long in the tooth! Over the years I started increasing the tooth height without realizing it. After reading your phrase I spent the day doing dental work on those dot-supporting 'teeth' to shorten the verticals - so thanks.

@AzizMostafa cultures definitely do interbreed - and the strong ones learn from others while retaining their own personality. That Mei Hei font is one of so many other fonts trying to mimick scripts of other languages - for example a Latin alphabet made up of Arabic letter forms is ridiculous at worst and too exotic at best.
By the way when is Maryam Soft going to have its website in Arabic so that we can see what you are up to - if indeed you are associated with that software? I once tried to install a trial version but Windows rejected it for some reason. BTW is there a way to learn more about what is going on in Arabic modern fonts in countriues like Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia ?

@Aristocrato glad you are enjoying the conversation! I once designed for a manufacturer an electronic display for indic numerals ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠ using a small number of shapes - just as those 1980's style displays showed Arabic numerals 1234567890 with a few vertical and horizontal lines - but I guess the idea was never in demand. Now even in printing and other Arabic texts "Arabic" numerals in their incongruent Latin form are dotting Arabic texts while the beautifully designed Indic numerals that developed with the script to match are becoming relics. Disaster!

Vladimir Tamari> When is Maryam Soft going to have its website in Arabic so that we can see what you are up to.

@ http://www.maryamsoft.com/QalamBartar/ is self-explanatory?! Language is not an issue?! However, 3 language QalamBartar has been released 3 months ago in Arabic,English @s well @s Farsi. http://typophile.com/files/QB-English_1.pdf . It takes only a couple of minutes to download @ install . But only by those with licensed serial numbers. More modern @ calligraphy fonts can be click-explored throu http://www.maryamsoft.com/FontShop/ and can be packed into QB successively.

Vladimir Tamari > I once tried to install a trial version but Windows rejected it for some reason.

@ You mean the complimentary copy of MirEmad http://www.maryamsoft.com/MirEmad/ you confirmed that you had received last year? It takes only a couple of minutes to download the latest update and install . Please paste your serial number here http://www.maryamsoft.com/download/ @ enter the code below it. Install the downloaded file and send me the auto generated code at your PC so that I can send you the activation code soon.

Vladimir Tamari > Is there a way to learn more about what is going on in Arabic modern fonts in countries like Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia ?

@ We are giving away complimentary copies of QB for those willing to have QB webpages in their mother tongues including Chinese @ Japaneses. Just have a look at;

Indonesia: http://bagaimanalagi.com/
http://fath-multimedia.blogspot.com/p/qalambartar-editor-teks-arabjawi_2...
http://fath-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/qalambartar-editor-teks-arab...

Vladimir, great to hear!

the damage seems to be limited to display fonts

That's where it starts. Overt display features end up seeping down to text, just in subtle form.

hhp

AzizMostafa: You are so kind in your words. Thank you!
Vladimir: I have never seen an electronic display showing indic numerals. That sounds awesome!! Mine was intended for a weather system I did for my thesis. Here it is the "inception" of StarCo Round:

I've been busy at my job but in the free times I can get, I do minor changes. I know it still has its details but I managed to enlarge the dots and give space to some letters.

Thank you Aziz I have been working hard for 5 months to finalize eight weights of my fonts. I will examine the riches of your font website and respond to the above after a while inshallah.

No thanks to those misguided great poets the editors of Shi'r magazine, in the 1950's and later Mawaqef, in Beirut who wanted to - they thought - reintroduce "Arabic" letters to the Arab world - the indic numerals are disappearing from text and billboards, chequebooks and so on. Pity I really like them.
Your display numerals are nice the 5 is a bit confusing at first because it looks like an inverted 2. The ones I was referring to are 7-segment (not 8!, a mental slip because when they are all lit it shows 8) LCD displays. Here is a variation I found on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sixteen-segment_display_animated.gif

I like your final yeh swan shape. I think you will find that words with repeated dots will cause overlap id you retain the wide separation of the 2 dots in the medial teh .
Good luck

I have changed the number 2 since that initial idea because of that.

Aristarco > I'd like to understand how much space should exist between letters in arabic

As explained here: http://typophile.com/node/46166#comment-284067
1. Kill the spaces to the right of all.
2. Kill the spaces to the left of R and its dotted twin (Z).
3. Left Space the rest of the letters (Lam-Alif ligature, D @ its dotted twin) to the narrowest between )(.

Hope watching this will help
http://www.maryamsoft.com/QalamBartar/

AzizMostafa, I've finally understood that you're using the @ as an &, when you say "D @ its dotted twin." Earlier on, you recommended "2. Kill the spaces after R @ Z ; 3. Shorten the initial F @ Q." and I was thinking for days "killing the spaces after R and Z, I get it, but after ﮪ?? I've shortened initial F and Q, but if I shorten ﮪ more, it'll disappear! How do I do that?" Hahahahah! You meant R & Z, F & Q, right? Thanks for your advise. XD this "@" confusion made me laugh a lot!

Ok, to avoid the dots to overlap, I squeezed them so if they touch, they barely touch to the next ones, but now I feel they look too tight in other letters. I think I'll enlarge the joints to avoid them to touch and increase the separation again because I feel they look so tight they'll start a neutron star! Or, am I being paranoid?

Now you're reminding me of Beirut street battles... ;-)

hhp

Hey! It looks good after all! I made a test in Word and looks good even at small sizes. Good... (joining fingers in a Palpatine-esque way) good...

Ok, baby steps here. Haven't changed the spacing, just adjusted here and there, like the R and Z space to the left.

Aristarco > you're using the @ as an &

@ Because (@) looks more flowery than the stacked petals of (&) @ the (Heh) in your font?! :)

Aristarco - if you squeeze the teeth of the seen sheen and enlarge the spacing of the other dotted teeth you will get a more balanced font. Yes it looks quite nice as text bravo for designing for a language you do not read! Should I try an Aztec font? That appendix at the end of the isolated seen is superfluous and is best removed?

Vladimir Tamari > if you squeeze the teeth of the seen sheen and enlarge the spacing of the other dotted teeth you will get a more balanced font.

@ How if the tooth spacing is made as wide as Kashida @ the s__n/ s.^.n toothless?!

AzizMostafa - Toothless s__n and sh^n as in ruq'a script - has anyone tried that in a modern font? Oh, I just remembered that I myself did - in two yet unreleased fancy display fonts. It works especially in final and isolated forms.

Vladimir Tamari > Toothless s__n and sh^n as in ruq'a script - has anyone tried that in a modern font? ... It works especially in final and isolated forms.

@ Ask who is well aware about it?!
http://typophile.com/node/84552
http://www.sultanfonts.com/
http://en.cyclopaedia.net/wiki/Ruq,-ah

I did not question whether a Ruq'a has been made into a modern font - it obviously has, but whether toothless seen and sheen have been implemented in a non-Ruq'a modern font. I am amazed how many new type designers are out there! How do you feel about that ?

Seen and sheen in a non-Ruq'a modern font?!
http://www.maryamsoft.com/FontShop/wm_Tahriri/

> how many new type designers are out there! How do you feel about that ?

@ The truth or what is perceived to be true?!

In an effort to make StarCo Round fully cross-platform, I changed it to .otf and, of course, it does not work properly anymore. I'll stick to .ttf but makes me feel somewhat upset. I'll correct the errors before doing more changes to the glyphs. Oh well...