bugFree UCS Outline Fonts - Bugs: bug #25463, Serif: Replacement of Arabic range

 
 

bug #25463: Serif: Replacement of Arabic range

Submitted by:  Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny>
Submitted on:  Mon 02 Feb 2009 02:11:46 PM UTC  
 
Category: character rangeSeverity: 4 - Important
Item Group: glyph(s) uglyStatus: Fixed
Privacy: PublicAssigned to: Steve White <Stevan_White>
Open/Closed: ClosedRelease: development

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Sat 12 May 2012 09:37:42 AM UTC, comment #10:

Hello again Mohamed Ahmed,

The first issue was the bug I mentioned, which had slipped into the release. The issue of meem-final has been pointed out before, but I was confused by the Unicode samples for U+FEE2
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFE70.pdf
which looks like a downward hook with a left-slanting slash, and by the fact that this letter takes multiple stylistic forms. The issue of placement of marks on lam-alef ligatures was new.

I think the issues you pointed out are now resolved.
Find attached an image of how your sample appears on my system, as well as the HTML I used.

(Please, if you have further issues, open a new bug report against the current release of the font -- this report is about a replacement of the range, which has already occurred.)

Thanks very much!

(file #25838, file #25839)

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Tue 08 May 2012 09:11:26 PM UTC, comment #9:

I installed the 03-05-2012 release of Freefont and uploaded an image showing bugs in the Arabic range. The first one from the right is the letter "Yāʾ" it should not look like what is shown at all. The second is about the position of the Tanween sign, it should be above the letter "Lām", not the Alef as shown. The last one is the letter "mīm" it isn't propely shown. I am not a specialist in Font design, but i think Amiri fits for FreeFont.

(file #25821)

محمد أحمد <mohamedahmed>
Mon 07 May 2012 05:37:07 PM UTC, comment #8:

Hello Mohamed Ahmed,

Please attach an image of some text rendered in FreeSerif on your system. Before we continue, let's make sure we are discussing the same thing.

Amiri is unquestionably a beautiful font. After some difficult consideration, I decided it didn't fit well the existing FreeFont -- for other reasons, not because it wasn't beautiful enough. The goal of FreeFont is explicitly to be collections of faces that look somehow right together.

I am willing to discuss the point however.

As you have seen, the Arabic letters in FreeSerif (plain and bold) have been replaced. Several native speakers have been involved, and it has been a lot of work. The results may not be exactly beautiful, but they have been judged functional (One bug oustanding bug slipped through this release. It is now fixed, and will appear in the next release).

The style of the other ranges of FreeFont are meant to be similar to the bulk text faces used in newsprint and the like. These faces tend to be simple and vertically compact. These were taken as examples for FreeSerif.

Thanks!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Sun 06 May 2012 05:18:01 PM UTC, comment #7:

I strongly support the replacement of Arabic range. I am a native arabic speaker, and I must say that the current Arabic range is not only ugly compared to Amiri font, but it has a number of bugs. It looks like the Arabic font in an ATARI game console. It must be replaced. Amiri font is beautiful and I support using it.

محمد أحمد <mohamedahmed>
Thu 03 May 2012 04:51:14 PM UTC, comment #6:

That is up to you, I tried my best to help making FreeFont usable for Arabic users, but you don't seem to listen; the Arabic range in FreeFont is massive bile of useless garbage, no amount of fixing can help it, it have to be removed completely without leaving a trace a a new range be drawn by someone who have any knowledge of Arabic type design. And, there is nothing anywhere that is like FreeFont's Arabic range, I don't know what kind of newspapers you were looking it but I'm absolutely sure they are nothing like FreeFont. There is also no digital font that is as horrible, free or not (except may be the crap of Paktype Naskh, was that the source of FreeFont's Arabic range?), I'd be surprised how someone can make anything that is worse than FreeFont.

I don't really understand what you are arguing for, really! This is crap, real crap, garbage, worthless, hideous, what words can I use to tell you how bad is this! In need to be removed immediately, even if there is no replacement! It is an insult! Not supporting Arabic at all is an improvement, and advance from where FreeFont stands right now!

I think I said all I have to say, though I highly doubt you are going to understand, so unless you are willing to trash this crap intermediately, there is nothing I can help with.

Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny>
Thu 03 May 2012 04:04:07 PM UTC, comment #5:

Hi Khaled,

Sorry for the long delay in replying. I'm closing this for now, but I would still appreciate your input.

As I said, your work on Amiri is absolutely beautiful.

However, I don't think it really fits FreeFont. It's (in my opinion) too beautiful.

On your suggestion, I went downtown, and looked at Arabic texts and newspapers. There's a lot of variation, but overall, the style of plain-old-newsprint strikes me as being much more like what we had already done with FreeSerif (this was me and several native speakers -- who have various opinions about the style, but say it's usable now).

As to un-design, well, I certanly see what you mean. But you could call it "organic". A lot of other free Arabic fonts are much worse.

I'm not against another complete replacement in the future (using either glyphs from you or anybody else). But I would need to be satisfied that the style is a comfortable, everyday document style, suitable for newsprint, journals, official reports, and such.

Thanks!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Sat 15 Oct 2011 05:29:45 PM UTC, comment #4:

Thanks Steve for the work you have done, but my opinion on the (un)design of current Arabic glyphs remains that they are broken beyond any repair. I've been working since I opened this issue on an Arabic revival, Amiri font, and I think its design goes well with the Times Roman design of Free Serif. Amiri font is a bit complex though for Free Serif (many contextual alternate forms), so I was planing for a subset of Amiri (à la MS' Traditional Arabic or Linotype's Lotus) implemented in more simple ways OpenType-wise. Currently Amiri is lacking only two alphabetic characters in the Unicode Arabic range, once they are done I think I can start working on that subset and eventually merging it into Free Serif.

Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny>
Fri 30 Sep 2011 07:22:26 PM UTC, comment #3:

Hi, Khaled,

I've filled out the range, starting from the existing letters, mostly just making references, but also altering a lot of letters. This was originally in response to another report that pointed out the Farsi wasn't supported well at all.

Now in SVN.

The letter forms could be replaced again, of course, so the option of using the Omega fonts is still open.

Please have a look at the latest sources, I'd like to know what you think.

Thanks!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Wed 04 Feb 2009 12:54:45 AM UTC, comment #2:

Concerning the legal issue, AFAIK Omega and its fonts are under GPL2 (or any later version), we can also contact Yannis HARALAMBOUS (http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/) if explicit permission is needed.

I attached a new validated patch, all reported errors are fixed, plus some mark glyphs that I missed, and minor fix to the Allah ligature.

(file #17401)

Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny>
Tue 03 Feb 2009 09:31:32 PM UTC, comment #1:

Khaled,

They look good, weight-wise, and to my untrained eye as Arabic letters.

The first question is a legal one. The Omega fonts are copyrighted by the Omega project. I think some permission was granted by the authors for some previous inclusion into FreeFont, but I have not personally seen this permission. Do you have any further info on this? This is a crucial issue.

Technical points: Please run the FontForge Validate routine, and also many of the "Find Problems". Specifically, a few glyphs are drawn backwards, a few are self-intersecting, and many don't have nodes at extrema.

Besides this the only other concern is the one we discussed off-line, about the vertical bounds of the letters.

Thanks again!

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Project AdministratorIn charge of this item.
Mon 02 Feb 2009 02:11:46 PM UTC, original submission:

The glyphs in the Arabic range are too ugly to be used in any Arabic document. The attached patch replaces the existing Arabic glyphs with modified ones from OmegaSerifArabic font. It also adds a missing "Arabic Dammtan (U+064C)", and 'fina' substitution of "Arabic Letter Teh Marbuta (U+0629)" (the glyphs were there, but no OpenType substitution).

Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny>

 

(Note: upload size limit is set to 16384 kB, after insertion of the required escape characters.)

Attach File(s):
   
   
Comment:
   

Attached Files
file #25838:  mohamedahmed.png added by Stevan_White (6KiB - image/png)
file #25821:  Arabic FreeSerif.xcf added by mohamedahmed (28KiB - image/x-xcf)
file #17401:  FreeSerif.sfd_2.diff added by khaledhosny (246KiB - text/x-patch - New patch)
file #17384:  FreeSerif.sfd.diff added by khaledhosny (239KiB - text/x-patch - Arabic range replacement)

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

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  • -unavailable- added by mohamedahmed (Posted a comment)
  • -unavailable- added by Stevan_White (Posted a comment)
  • -unavailable- added by khaledhosny (Submitted the item)
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    Follow 11 latest changes.

    Date Changed By Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced By
    Sat 12 May 2012 09:37:42 AM UTCStevan_WhiteAttached File-=>Added mohamedahmed.png, #25838
      Attached File-=>Added mohamedahmed.html, #25839
    Tue 08 May 2012 09:11:26 PM UTCmohamedahmedAttached File-=>Added Arabic FreeSerif.xcf, #25821
    Thu 03 May 2012 04:04:07 PM UTCStevan_WhiteStatusProceeding=>Fixed
      Open/ClosedOpen=>Closed
    Fri 28 Oct 2011 08:22:57 PM UTCStevan_WhiteSeverity3 - Normal=>4 - Important
    Wed 04 Feb 2009 12:54:45 AM UTCkhaledhosnyAttached File-=>Added FreeSerif.sfd_2.diff, #17401
    Tue 03 Feb 2009 09:31:32 PM UTCStevan_WhiteStatusNone=>Proceeding
      Assigned toNone=>Stevan_White
    Tue 03 Feb 2009 09:31:31 PM UTCStevan_WhiteItem Groupcharacter substitution issue=>glyph(s) ugly
    Mon 02 Feb 2009 02:11:46 PM UTCkhaledhosnyAttached File-=>Added FreeSerif.sfd.diff, #17384

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