Thanks Aziz this is useful to know. The second link is in Persian which I do not read, can you give the main points of the application?

I know Aziz is an enemy of Unicode but I am not.
These tools are very useful as graphic tools. They manage to produce text in a very complex visual styles. But the text produced by these tools have no portability. The fonts are encoded for the application functionality and are not at all Unicode compliant.
I have not tried these because they don't work on my Mac. But I viewed some of their work and they are quite impressive.
But I personally wait for Tom Milo to popularize his engine so that we could produce Arabic text as pleasant but Unicode compliant.
The Persian page essentially has the same approach as the English page. They have a variety of tools and variety of fonts, including fonts that are encoded in a way to be used with Applications that don't support rtl.
I am a very Unicode guy and very much against these kind of workaround.
However, until Tom makes the move, there is an OpenType Unicode Persian Nasta'liq font in beta version -very buggy- which worth to look at because as far as the character design goes, it is wonderful. Before you encounter a bug, you can see how beautiful this font can be.
http://www.scict.ir/Portal/File/ShowFile.aspx?ID=bea5ca36-1fdf-41d4-8818...

> Aziz is an enemy of Unicode

1. Save for tip-top Arabic Mark-positing, the Digital Calligrapher that
I jointly finished developing with Maryamsoft.com proves otherwise:
http://typophile.com/node/48495

2. Unicode did not help the developers of Adobe Arabic:
http://typophile.com/node/36706
that I have redone it to go searchable with PageMaker5.5ME
and redone jointly with Maryamsoft to go searchable with M$ Word.
Of course for our own use.

With Flowers

Bahnam wrote:

>>However, until Tom makes the move, there is an OpenType Unicode Persian Nasta’liq font in beta version -very buggy- which worth to look at because as far as the character design goes, it is wonderful. Before you encounter a bug, you can see how beautiful this font can be. http://www.scict.ir/Portal/File/ShowFile.aspx?ID=bea5ca36-1fdf-41d4-8818...

It is very beautiful indeed, but alittle buggy. A lot of work, do you know who designed it? Tom had already created templates for adapting several styles to Tasmeem, but Nasta'liq as beautiful as this one would probably need a template on its own.

-Saad

I know Aziz is an enemy of Unicode […]

Aziz, in my ignorance of Arabic, may I ask you why?
Of course, I entirely agree about Micro$oft… :=)

This font face has a very complex and - so far - sad story.
It was originated in one of those special 'graphic' tools that Aziz mentioned. The character design is by one of the masters of the field, although I saw his name somewhere a while back, but now I can't find a trace of it anywhere. This may be a part of the story of the conflict that has been aparently developped around the development of the Unicode version of this font face.
It was commissioned by the Islamic regim of Iran. The government English site has no information about this project.
http://www.scict.ir/Portal/Home/Default.aspx?CategoryID=3245b8ee-53dd-44...
The Persian site has a little. It was first budgeted for 190 M Rls and what you see is the result of that commission! Now the developper is asking for more to fix the bugs and apparently 70 M Rls is approved or in the process of approval. This is mainly a technical side conflict. The original designer is faded in the turmoil, as it always happens with Arabic fonts. I am told the bug free version was already prepared when the developper delivered this to the government!
This is the government Persian page, announcing this font:
http://www.scict.ir/Portal/Home/ShowPage.aspx?Object=News&CategoryID=72e...
And it is all written with Tahoma!

Everywhere, Projects handled by Governmental bodies are fruitless.
The Unicoded OTF Nasta’liq (re)developed by MaryamSoft.com will silence All.
Letter Dots are re-distributed intelligently when words are hard-spaced?!
___________________________________________________________
Behnam + Piccic, have a picnic with Flowers

The typeface is beautiful, but I wasn't asking about its story.
I just did not get the reference to Unicode as criticized by Aziz…

@Aziz: You won't trick me twice into that crossword… :=P

Well piccic, I dont trick anybody even once into anything?
But what can I do if that transformed apple is too tricky for you?

piccic:
>>The typeface is beautiful, but I wasn’t asking about its story.

Oh sorry. I was answering Saad. You just jumped into it in the meantime.

Aziz
>>The Unicoded OTF Nasta’liq (re)developed by MaryamSoft.com will silence All

Well, I hope not the Iranian taxpayers! But you most probably are right!

But my main concern about this complex fonts is somewhere else. They are just too complex to be made.
As a user, if I don't like the shape of A in Times, I choose Arial, Helvetica something else and if none of them is satisfactory, somewhere someone will be able to produce a font with an A shaped to my satisfaction. The effort involved is comparatively minimal.
As a user, I will have exactly the same approach to a Nasta'liq font or a complex Naskh font. If I see a dot not positioned to my liking, I simply won't use the font, oblivious to the fact that how much effort was involved in producing such font.

So to me, the issue is not simply the fisabilty. It can be done with GPOS. It is whether the effort involved is reasonalbe or not. This is the issue that I'm hoping Tom Milo's engine answer. Arabic font making should be technically reasonabley easy, so that the real designers don't sink in the complexity of the task. Otherwise, why not sticking with GPOS of OpenType and screw the designers as usual?!

Aah, Aziz you're too enigmatic for me… :=)