On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:02:58 -0700, Khaled Hosny
Microsoft's OpenType features list page (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/features_ae.htm) gives a "UI suggestion" for each feature noting if it should be on by default, I think those are what most OpenType enable by default (at least the ones I tested).
i've been thinking of a features=default option (as there is already features=yes|no)
Maybe we can have a features=ms_arabic
instead of defaulting to MS' recommendation. So in the final high-end user interface we can have keys like
featureset=ms_arabic
I think the 'ms' part is't really needed, we can just call it"arabic", or are we going to have more Arabic feature sets?
We are almost certainly going to have more :-)
But I agree with Hans that this is a matter that needs more thought. For example, Traditional Arabic mixes OpenType and older M$ specs in Uniscribe, so just plugging in the default features that M$ suggests is not sufficient for, eg, vowel function in Tr Ar.
That is beyond OpenType support, since Traditional Arabic is essentially broken at many levels, even when Uniscribe is used (vowel marks break lam-alef ligatures for example), Ms Arabic fonts are special case since they were developed long ago before OpenType and aren't the best examples.
OTOH there are a lot of arabic fonts like this around that we want to support as well if we can... We a font categorization scheme to fit the most used fonts in the this regard.
Also, what about Arabic fonts on the mac, so they follow the same specs as M$?
AFAIK, Microsoft's Uniscribe is the reference OpenType implementation, and I assume that Apple's OpenType implementation follows its recommendations (I can't test that).
This is something we should investigate... uniscribe is quirky in a few areas -- it does extra spell-checking beyond what Arabic actually needs, for example. That's one reason I'm not comfortable with using it as a default standard. Khaled: Have you considered making an inventory of available Arabic fonts? Or does one already exist? We could put together a table of what's available, checking for available OT features, etc. 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