Re: Help: Arabic fonts for Turklangs

Philip Newton wrote:

> On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 03:02:21 -0500, Geoff Horswood
> <geoffhorswood@...> wrote:
> > Does anyone know where I can lay my hands on any of the modified Arabic
> > (modified Farsi??) fonts that are used for writing Turkic languages like
> > Kazakh, Kyrghyz and Uighur in NW China?
>
> I suggest you get a well-stocked Unicode-encoded font. For example,
> Code2000 (shareware, $5) or Arial Unicode MS both contain quite a
> number of such characters.
Indeed those fonts include necessary characters, but their open tables are
not smart enough to make ligatures: the additional characters just remain in
isolated forms. Arial Unicode MS ignores *ALL* additional characters but
Farsi; Code2000 does not deel well with some of them. At least that is what
happens on my comp (under Win98).

----------
Tim May wrote:


> If it's simply a matter of being able to display Arabic script with
> the extended characters used in those languages, that's easily done.
> You just need a Unicode font that supports those characters in the
> Arabic range.
As you see, it's not so easy. One needs fonts that would make ligatures
correctly.

> If you actually want a font in an appropriate style for
> e.g. Ottoman Turkish, that might take a little more searching (and I
> don't know enough about Arabic calligraphy to help you).
I would suggest to limit yourself with Farsi extensions for now, till the
software becomes more sofisticated. At least that was my decision wrt Ajami.
A good set of Farsi fonts (including calligraphic) helps a lot.
Unfortunately I don't remember where I got mine, but googling for "B
Ferdosi" and/or "B Esfehan" may help.

-- Yitzik

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