Sat 30 Jun 2012 10:57:39 PM UTC, comment #3:
Hi Benoit,
This clarifies things a bit.
First, let me re-emphasize about the state of FreeSerif:
- The latest version (the 2012 one) is far better than previous releases. It still has a couple of bad bugs though.
If you would like a more recent snapshot, I can give you that too.
- I personally only know the script from books. Some native speakers helped out in the latest version, but everybody had complaints.
- I'm quite willing to correct right away any bugs you find.
As to shortness of the text: this is normal. For one thing, vowels are not usually written in Arabic. For another, this font is specifically meant for dense text, such as newspapers -- it is not intended to be pretty, but rather, practical.
I know the readability of Arabic drops faster than the Latin. I am concerned about that, and would improve it, but as you say, it's partly the delicate nature of the script. (It happens in Indic scripts as well.)
There are some free Arabic fonts around, which are much more beautiful than FreeSerif. (I don't judge these as being appropriate for general use though: for one thing, they tend to be stylized for a specific language, usually Arabic, where FreeSerif is intended to be language-generic.)
As to your temporary solution: You know, under the GNU GPL license, you are quite free to edit the fonts yourself. If you re-distribute the altered font, you must do so under license compatable with the GPL, you must change the name of the font and take responsibility for your changes, and you ought to give some credit to the FreeFont group.
The copying is not exactly trivial though... I could help.
As to your particular application, I agree completely. One of the main goals of the FreeFont project is to facilitate good-looking mixed-script text without fiddling with fonts. It is a pity that there is no FreeSans for Arabic. This needs to be rectified.
I'll change the title of your request from "copy Arabic characters from FreeSerif to FreeSans" to one that reflect the need rather than specifying the solution. I don't know anybody else who has time to work on this righ now though.
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