Although I haven’t posted much recently we have still been working away. Besides the latest update to Version 0.7 of the core fonts, which posed some technical challenges, we have now finalised the Hebrew Regular and are making good tracks with the Arabic.
You may remember the earlier post on the subject of the Hebrew where we pondered the height of the Hebrew letters in relation to the Latin. Initially, we favoured a smaller Hebrew design that was more akin to small caps but we then found, upon further reflection, that this was wrong. Eventually, we decided on a height that is just short of the Latin caps. These proportions now sit very comfortably with the Latin and, more importantly, the Hebrew feels right on its own accord. Pilar Cano, one of the designers in the Dalton Maag team, worked closely with a native Hebrew speaking typographer to ensure that the letters have coherence, are legible and maintain the clean and modern expression that is Ubuntu.
The Hebrew Regular is now completed and Pilar is proceeding with designing the Italic style. Some studies suggest that if the Italic is leaning in the same direction as the Latin it should be a simple slanted. We will, however, inject some cursive elements into the Italic to maintain stylistic coherence with the Latin.
The last two months we have also worked on the Arabic design. As with many complex and exotic scripts the challenge is to translate the look and feel of the Latin to the non-Latin script. Our design team, lead by Ron Carpenter, developed a wide range of initial concept trials to define the design features and texture of the Arabic and presented these to our consultant Prof Rayan Abdullah. Together we discussed and refined the trials until we arrived at the design that we are now all happy with: a primarily Kufic design that is tempered with some Naskh elements to make it suitable for text size reading. The strong Kufic influence makes this font particularly suitable for short entries in UI design for future Ubuntu Arabic localisations.
Refining the design concept
Rayan and Ron discussing design details
As with the Latin, the Arabic runs slightly more narrow that one would normally expect, to facilitate the use in UI. This presents a challenge in regards to the dot positioning above and below base characters. The dots are crucial to clearly identify the character, and a misinterpretation can easily lead to a word having a completely different meaning. We have placed the double dot on a diagonal line which allows for two double-dot characters to be set next to each other without causing any interpretation, aesthetic or legibility issues. A further feature of the Arabic design is that the baseline has a soft, rounded appearance, as is the case with the x-height and in some cases the cap height in the Latin. This, combined with the overall texture creates a tight harmony between the two scripts.
Studying dot placement and shape
As Italics as such do not exist in Arabic we will simply add the standard Regular and Bold versions to the Ubuntu Italic and Bold Italic fonts ensuring that all fonts have identical charactersets. We are working hard to complete all the design and engineering work for these fonts for the next big Ubuntu release in the coming Spring.
thanks :)
Arabic looks nice . can not wait to try it :)
I will spread this news , hoping professional people may help with a feedback .
Very nice work :) The diagonal positioning of dots looks strange, I’ve never seen it on other fonts. With little size the positioning of dots can be confused with syntax indications (الشكل)
thank you for your great work.
But when only the fonts will be ready for download and use??
thanks.
OMG!
That’s one of the Greatest Arabic Sanserif I had ever seen
but::
9pt is not clear enough to be seen “the dots”
the letter ق and م must look much different to be easy to read
what about Tashkeel? ًٌٍَُِّْ
the font look nice but i think professional in arabic font’s will contribute with there suggestions about it,
great gob and I’m waiting to see it on ubuntu .
Good work !
Is CJK planned ?
Thanks for the efforts. I wish if there were more options regarding the arabic writing style. especially ones where the letters has sharper angles.
Thanks for all your comments – I’d like to reply where I can:
– diagonal dot position: yes, I thought that would be somewhat controversial, and yes, I have not seen this on any other Arabic font either. Our consultant, Rayan Abdullah, assures us that this will work and whilst at first it may look strange, people will accept it quickly. Of course, we’ll do some more indepth testing at very small sizes, too, and make alterations where we feel necessary.
– dot size: That is always an issue in Arabic. Make them bigger and they are overbearing at large size. Again, we’ll do some testing and fine tuning as we are fully aware that it will have to work on screen, too.
– the fonts are planned for the next big Ubuntu system update in May.
– Tashkeel: The characterset is not quite finalised yet but we hope to have that ready in the coming days.
– CJK: hehe, discussed but not planned yet. At the Orlando UDS I participated in the Chinese localisation discussion and Chinese fonts are definitely high on the priority list. Unfortunately, this will take some time to do due to the sheer size of the glyph sets. Hopefully, me and my team at Dalton Maag will be involved with this, too, but we will rely on help from the community and local font designers. I am currently in the process of finding resources who are prepared to put in some effort. The same goes for other Asian scripts so please bear with us. We’re working as hard as we possibly can.
– Arabic styles: in an ideal world we’d have a pure Kufic for headline and UI purposes and a Naskh/Nasdaliq for text for body copy. However, I believe that with this design we are moving the Arabic script away from strong calligraphic influences into a more contemporary font design world where it will find deep acceptance accross many communities. And don’t forget that the Latin script underwent a similar transition after Gutenberg, so this move away from calligraphy is perfectly legitimate.
This looks good. Are there any plans for Devanagari characters as well? I’d be very interested to see how you would design those.
الخط العربى رائع فعلا وجميل .. صحيح ان طريقة التنقيط غريبة ولكنها مناسبة .. واتمنى الاخذ فى الاعتبار حجم الكلمة فى شريط العنوان والازرا حتى لا يخرج جزء من الكلمة عن الاطار
Great job..
There are two problems with Arabic fonts in Linux generally, Tashkeel appears as a separated letters taking space in the line while Tashkeel must be appear with the letter as a unite.
some website when they use italic Arabic, it’s appear as a squares .. maybe fonts doesn’t support italic, but that doesn’t mean to be appear weird.
I hope you avoid them.
By the way, some Arabic fonts support italic, yes we don’t care about it so much in real life .. but I think even in English, italic is not exists in real life ..
so I hope italic will be supported in Arabic and I know you will find a way to do it..
thank you guys ..
thank you Prof Rayan
The Hebrew characters look very nice, but is it possible to see an example where the letters and the vowel sings are combined? That’s where the trouble usually lies. For example, in words like these:
* רֹאשׁ (“head”)
* לַעֲבֹד (“to work”)
* הֽ͏ַבְרָכָה (“blessing”; a Biblical word with special use of cantillation to indicate a question)
* יְרוּשָׁלִַם (the unusual Biblical spelling of “Jerusalem”)
Oh, and there’s also the special placement of Dagesh in letters like יּ, פּ, אּ, זּ.
We will be engineering the font using VOLT, so many of the combinations actually don’t appear as a glyph but are composed on the fly using anchor positions/OT layouts. If you tell me that is a problem we may have to make them ‘real’ glyphs as well as support the OT layout feature.
At present the font has not been fully engineered yet to do proper setting with vowel and other marks. We’ve primarily concentrated on the design for now.
Guys just add four letters (7 glyphs) to Arabic font and it would be ready for Persian! additional letters are just similar to Arabic ones and it would be a piece of cake to that! for example پ have two additional dots compared to ب .
kudos to you all folks at Ubuntu Design Team :)
Great Work. Thanks for what you are doing with Ubuntu.
I’m just curious, do you have any intention to implement the Hieroglyph (ancient African Language) ?
Please don’t ignore Persian-speaking users. Persian alphabet is exactly the same as Arabic plus 7 glyphs. Mani users in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan write in Persian. Please don’t ignore them.
Sorry I meant “many users”
Hi.
Please don’t forgot Iranian users and Persian alphabets in your designs.
Thanks.
I second the demand for additional letters and would also remind not to forget the additional letters needed for Kurdish.
Yes ,the Persian and Arabic letters that are same and only differents between there is “پ” ,”گ ” ,”چ ” and “ژ “.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_alphabet
It would be great if you include Persian glyphs too. I don’t think it’s difficult as almost all glyphs are identical with Arabic.
I hope that you don’t forgot Persian :)
Hi!
please don’t forgot Persian User’s
Yeah, I feel the need for a Persian font too!
I hope Ubuntu doesn’t forget us!
The Arabic will support Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and a host of other languages. So, again, you haven’t quite seen the full glyph set yet.
In years to come my friend, I suppose. Development beyond what we are currently doing will depend on how much hands-on help we will get from the type-geeks in the community.
الخط جميل فعلا ومبادرة حسنة
لكن أرى أن تموضع النقاط يكون أفقيا أفضل خاصة مع الخط صغير الحجم
في رأيي حجم الهاء كبير نوعا ما كذلك العكس بالنسبة للهمزة
شكرا…
Great efforts Artists, Thank you.
The diagonal dots maybe acceptable for reading, but for design integration, I think it is not so good.
Good work about similarity between Arabic & Latin glyphs.
Thank you, I hope see fonts on system & programs very soon.
excellent :D
amazing, love the arabian font style
translation, for non-Arabic speakers:
“the font is really nice,
but I think that it would be better to position the dots horizontally , especially in small fonts.”
translation, for non-Arabic speakers:
“I think that the haa'(ه) letter size it somehow big (bigger than usual), and the opposite with the hamza (ء)”
is**
after few shares on facebook ::
all the people on my list “linux mac windows” users
saw the arabic font is ugly and distracting and unreadable
one of the comments said:
I took a long time to recognise in the pdf!
another comment was:
I have astigmatism and the dots are annoying me!
another one”linux geek”:
i think a Naskh type like KacstOne would be nice that one is disturbing
I think am the only one who likes the font
may be i am just a Ubuntu fanboy :@
The arabic font isn’t nice at all. You can replaced it with naskh “نسخ” font.
It much nicer.
Good luck.
replace*
Arabic and Hebrew looks awesome :)
Specially Arabic font..
Great work!
Arabic font looks nice, keep the good work. Thank you very much.
the dots in arabic font is not clear
Wonderful font.. Thank you
للأسف الخط محبط جدّاًولم أرى أي خط مثل هذا من قبل
لكن شكراً جزيلاً وأتمنى أن يتحسن الخط
Thank you very much.
Sorry, but it is not nice at all.
No offense.
But this is first time I see such a font if I showed it to primary school teacher s/he could kick me out of the class and tell me enhance your hand writing.
I feel like it is not a computer !
For example the letter “haa2” (هاء) in “هناك” (the first word) it is very huge and ugly !
and the letter “7aa2” (حاء) in “حقيقة” (the second word) it appear like a “stupid” “Meem” (ميم),
and the word “طويل” (second word in second line) it is one word but it is appearing as two words because the space in the middle is too long !
and the word “هي” (third word in second line) it is two letters only but the size of it is too big compared to its previous word which has four letters in length !
and last word in second line “المحتوي” this is a spelling error suppose to be “المحتوى” they put “yaa2” (ee) at the end of the word but suppose to be “2lif” (AA) ( ألف مقصورة وليست ياء ).
Also as one mentioned above the “hamzah” “ء” it is too small !
“2lif” (AA) and “lam” (L) (first word, third line) is very nice ;-))
and one very important thing which neither windows nor Linux did it correctly ( I do not blame the companies, it is from Arab side) is that there is an error in the position of the letters:
for example if we underline the third line ===> the underline will go throw the last letter in the last word of the third line as if it was a “throw line” and that is spelling error, it is suppose to go under the last letter “yaa2” “ي” because the whole letter suppose to be over the line, this one I am not 100% sure but I have never seen that the letter “yaa2” will go under the line !
Sorry again, I just wanted to share my ideas so that the font become nicer and more correct !..
Again thank you very much canonical.
I am a Computer science student and hope one day to work in developing Ubuntu.
نحن لا نريد خطاً مزخرف او مزين
بل نريد خط عادي ويكون بنفس الوقت جميل
لا نريد خطوط مرسومة وغير مألوفة لدينا انظرو لخط Arial
خط بسيط وبنفس الوقت جميل
Thank you for the efforts ;)
hi,
as a user of ubuntu for a few years, can say, that the arabic support is wonderful without arabic fonts wich cames at ubuntu packages, really those fonts for not writing texts, but for headers etc. or for web reading and i wonder if there a student or someone who print his work with those arabic fonts in ubuntu to bring to his teacher so all of us are using windoze fonts like arial or times to write an arabic text in openoffice.
but i think that this problem not the problem of ubuntu alone, this is one of big problems of the world of writing of arabic texts on any word processing program at all, just write “arabic font” googling you find more than 50 cites for free arabic fonts BUT THEY ARE NOT TO USE FOR TEXTING , it is only for type headers of newspapers and no more…
sincerely
p.s. for those who can not find a font to typing normal text : use the font called kastOne cames at ubuntu, this font is similar to the font of whole arabic newspapers’ texts :)
when we go to school we read and write NASKH font and when we read book we read NASKH font and when we read QURAN we read NASKH font why you don’t use NASKH font ?
As a Hebrew typography buff, I like your Hebrew font–but I detest the decision to implement italics for it.
The Hebrew alphabet is not suited for slanted writing; the fact that too many “trendsetters” decided to blindly copy the Latin typeface forms and implement “italic” / “oblique” fonts is a sad statement on their integrity and aesthetic sense. If you feel you must support Italic-like font, I’d much rather see a typeface influenced from the handwritten form of the letters (just like the Latin script’s italic typeface is influenced from the cursive calligraphic handwriting!) than yet another oblique rendering of square characters, with at best some cursive elements thrown in but without regards to existing tradition.
Maybe you did not understand the goals form creating this font !