On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:15:02 -0700, Khaled Hosny
The key point is that SIL has taken care to support nearly every Arabic-script language, not just Arabic, so this gives us a platform that all Arabic-script users can use by default until other free fonts -- or a fork of Scheherazade -- become available.
I already have a fork, I just don't want to encourage people to use such aesthetically poor fonts, but as it seems to be the only solution at hand right now (especially the Unicode covering), I think I'll try to clean my font and publish it this week ISA.
Ok, great!
BTW: There is an الله lig in Scheherazade -- rather unattractive, but it's there. Maybe you have an old version?
Sorry, yes it has one but is no better than not having one at all.
It's ugly, no doubt, but we can easily replace it, and a couple of the other specials as well. <snip>
See the above... make a list of errors in the font and we'll both work on it one way or other. Back to Lotus: I suggest to you and Otared the following project: develop Scheherazade into a free alternative to Lotus. Lotus is that is as close to a pure OpenType font as we are going to easily get. Although it supports less of Arabic-script unicode than Scheherazade, it is a standard in the Arabic-script publishing world. So if our default interface supports Lotus and Scheherazade out of the box, we will be well on our way to what you guys are looking for.
My initial idea was to extend Scheherazade in a similar way, but I gave up on this, there are so many similar glyphs in the Arabic Unicode block that a simple ligature like بي means 28 (Baa' forms) * 10 (Yaa' forms): 280 glyphs for one ligatures, I don't think this is a wise idea.
Sure, but again لا يسقط الميسور بالمعسور So just start with Arabic, then Farsi, and forget the rest for now. No need for perfection at the outset ;-) Actually, I suggest forgetting about ligatures etc. for now, and just get the basics done for Scheherazade. We can work on ligatures etc later. سلام Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shi`i Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523