[NTG-context] Ajami script

Henning Hraban Ramm texml at fiee.net
Sun Jan 1 11:03:34 CET 2023


Am 01.01.23 um 10:21 schrieb Hans Hagen via ntg-context:
> On 12/31/2022 3:06 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:
>> I just read this:
>> https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing-system/
>>
>> And now I’d like to know if ConTeXt is capable of typesetting this 
>> variant of Arabic. (Just out of curiosity, I can’t read any Arabic and 
>> don’t know any African language.)
> Afaiks that script has been known fro a while:

I also thought I heard about it several years ago. The article makes it 
sound like news, that might be the perspective of the US scholars or a 
necessary means to get funded. But the oldest sources quoted in 
Wikipedia are from 1971 and 1982.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script
> so when there are proper fonts, as:
> https://software.sil.org/scheherazade/
> https://software.sil.org/harmattan/

I don’t dare to ask about the Husayni fonts... ;)

> it should be doable. The script is supported by unicode. I get the 
> impression that the arabic scipt is mostly used getting the way the 
> languages sounds on paper so vowels matter. There is mentioning of 
> transliteration and so that might need some specific support. Nothing 
> tex (context) can't do but only users and usage can prove that.

Thank you for your insights!
Of course it’s a matter of use(r)s.

All the best for a happy new year!
Hraban



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