italic or iranic style?

[reza moshksar]

Hi,

I am contributing in gnu.org-freefont to add Arabic support for freefonts.

They asked me  italice style should be slanted more to the *right* like the rest of the fonts, or more to the "left" (Iranic)? now in ar.wikipedia they use Iranic style instead of italic.

Yours,

Reza

[John Hudson]

On 02/01/13 9:38 AM, reza moshksar wrote:

> They asked me italice style should be slanted more to the *right* like
> the rest of the fonts, or more to the "left"

The simple answer is that Arabic font families should not contain
italics, because italic style is a particular development of European
typography that has nothing to do with the Perso-Arabic script. In some
script traditions around the world, there is a formal/cursive
distinction in styles that enables a ready parallel with roman/italic in
European typography, but the Perso-Arabic tradition is based around
formalisation of cursive writing, so the parallel does not exist.
Rather, for purposes of textual differentiation, the Perso-Arabic
tradition, where it has needed to, has varied the style of writing or
type (although such variation is more commonly determined by text size
than by content).

I have only once been commissioned to create an 'italic' version of an
Arabic type, and that was for what still seems to me an ill-thought
reason. The client was a software company that was concerned that users
clicking the 'Italic' button in their apps would expect to see some kind
of visual result. In that case, after some testing, I decided to slant
the italic to the left. While there are styles of Perso-Arabic script in
which some letters have a noticeable lean to the right, this cannot be
applied to all styles and in many cases will result in an opening out of
letters that looks weird. The letters retain their identities better if
leaned to the left. That said, my strong recommendation would be not to
make italic fonts at all.

JH




--

Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Gulf Islands, BC ti...@tiro.com

The criminologist's definition of 'public order
crimes' comes perilously close to the historian's
description of 'working-class leisure-time activity.'
- Sidney Harring, _Policing a Class Society_

[reza moshksar]

After searching I found these fonts and Tex  that they made it in Iranic (lean to left) style.

In Persian Text formatting in some cases they recommended to use Italic/Iranic style. example

--
http://persian-computing.org/
http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing/

--

--
REZA MOSHKSAR
Phd candidate in Building, Environment, Science and Technology
B.E.S.T Department - Politecnico di Milano
Via Bonardi 9 20133 Milano Italy

[Behdad Esfahbod]

I studied this problem for my FarsiTeX thesis also, and reached the same
conclusion as others. Most Perso-Arabic glyphs have ascenders on the right
side and descenders in the center or on the left side. As such, slanting to
the left is more self-contained in the glyph box which slanting to the right
expands the glyph box considerably.

That said, when heavily mixed with Latin text, it's better to slant to the
right. For example, that's what I do in the Introduction section here:

http://behdad.org/ftexthes.pdf

behdad

On 13-01-02 01:50 PM, reza moshksar wrote:
> After searching I found these fonts

> <http://www.parwintype.ir/parwin-fonts/heading-samples/> and Tex
> <http://farsitex.blogfa.com/post-54.aspx> that they made it in Iranic (lean to

> left) style.
> In Persian Text formatting in some cases they recommended to use Italic/Iranic
> style. example

> <http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%DB%8C%DA%A9%DB%8C%E2%80%8C%D9%BE%D8%AF%DB%8C%D8%A7:%D8%B4%DB%8C%D9%88%D9%87%E2%80%8C%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%87_%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%E2%80%8C%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%AF%DB%8C_%D9%85%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%86#.D8.A7.DB.8C.D8.AA.D8.A7.D9.84.DB.8C.DA.A9_.D9.88_.DA.AF.DB.8C.D9.88.D9.85.D9.87>

> Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com <http://www.tiro.com>
> Gulf Islands, BC ti...@tiro.com <mailto:ti...@tiro.com>

>
> The criminologist's definition of 'public order
> crimes' comes perilously close to the historian's
> description of 'working-class leisure-time activity.'
> - Sidney Harring, _Policing a Class Society_
>
> --
> http://persian-computing.org/

> http://groups.google.com/__group/persian-computing/

> <http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing/>
>
>
>
>
> --
> --
> REZA MOSHKSAR
> Phd candidate in Building, Environment, Science and Technology
> B.E.S.T Department - Politecnico di Milano
> Via Bonardi 9 20133 Milano Italy
>
> --
> http://persian-computing.org/
> http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing/

--

behdad
http://behdad.org/

[John Hudson]

On 02/01/13 1:43 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

> That said, when heavily mixed with Latin text, it's better to slant to the
> right. For example, that's what I do in the Introduction section here:
> http://behdad.org/ftexthes.pdf

Why did you feel the need to slant that text? You'd already set it off
from the main text by indenting the margins on both sides.

JH


--

Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com

Gulf Islands, BC ti...@tiro.com

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 13-01-02 04:04 PM, John Hudson wrote:
> On 02/01/13 1:43 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>
>> That said, when heavily mixed with Latin text, it's better to slant to the
>> right. For example, that's what I do in the Introduction section here:
>> http://behdad.org/ftexthes.pdf
>
> Why did you feel the need to slant that text? You'd already set it off from
> the main text by indenting the margins on both sides.

That's a very good point. My guess is that the quotation environment in LaTeX
by default does Italics, which by default translates to Iranic in FarsiTeX, so
that's what I did first. Then based on Roozbeh's suggestion I turned it into
Slanted, which is what you see. You are right though, there was no real need.

Thanks,
b

> JH
>
>

--
behdad
http://behdad.org/

[Alec McAllister]

May I ask a complete beginner's question? I don't speak any Persian and know very little Arabic, but I have to support software for people who do.

I've read that Arabic uses the overlining of text as an equivalent of italicizing, and apparently ArabTeX uses the \aemph command to achieve this. Is that practice also used in Persian?

Alec McAllister
Multilingual Computing Co-ordinator
Information Systems Services
University of Leeds
Leeds
LS2 9JT
United Kingdom

Medieval Unicode Font Initiative:
http://www.mufi.info/

Personal Webpage:
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~ecl6tam

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 13-01-03 05:44 AM, Alec McAllister wrote:
> May I ask a complete beginner's question? I don't speak any Persian and know very little Arabic, but I have to support software for people who do.
>
> I've read that Arabic uses the overlining of text as an equivalent of italicizing, and apparently ArabTeX uses the \aemph command to achieve this. Is that practice also used in Persian?

Interesting. I don't remember seeing that. Although, I have used overline
instead of underline with Persian, just because that doesn't collide with the
letters as much as underline does.

b

--
behdad
http://behdad.org/

[dr.khal...@gmail.com]

I don’t recall ever seeing an over line used for emphases in Arabic, traditionally guillemots were used for that (but Arabic guillemots are rounded, like a double small parenthesis). Overlining is used to mark sajdah text in Quran, but I wouldn’t call this emphasis (sajdah mark marks the place where you can stop reciting and perform the sijud, the overline marks the text that caused it).

[Mostafa Hajizadeh]

I have used overline instead of underline with Persian, just because that doesn't collide with the letters as much as underline does.

I have thoughts for a special underline, where the line breaks around letters to avoid collision, but that should be implemented as a font, and I’m not sure how good that will work in practice. 

[Saeed Rasooli]

I think the idea of underline belongs to the age of paper (which is close to it's end) where there is a text paper and a pen to mark some parts of text. With 24-bit color screens, that's not very good idea specially for flexible/complex languages like Persian.

About Italic (or Iranic or whatever you name it), I think it should lean to right for any RTL text, and lean to left for any LTR text. Which is an extended definition of Italic (since Italian language is only left to right)

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Mostafa Hajizadeh <most...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have used overline instead of underline with Persian, just because that doesn't collide with the letters as much as underline does.

I have thoughts for a special underline, where the line breaks around letters to avoid collision, but that should be implemented as a font, and I’m not sure how good that will work in practice. 

--
http://persian-computing.org/
http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing/

[Shervin Afshar]

Will you put the line where the dots for پ et al. sit or where the descent line is? 

On somehow unrelated note; Is there something like a "lower meanline" in Perso-Arabic typography which is between baseline and descent?

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 1:44 AM, Mostafa Hajizadeh <most...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have used overline instead of underline with Persian, just because that doesn't collide with the letters as much as underline does.

I have thoughts for a special underline, where the line breaks around letters to avoid collision, but that should be implemented as a font, and I’m not sure how good that will work in practice. 

--
http://persian-computing.org/
http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing/

[Mostafa Hajizadeh]

Will you put the line where the dots for پ et al. sit or where the descent line is? 

As I said, it’s just a thought, and the details better dealt with in practice. But I guess decent line is way too bottom for underline. Never seen anything like that. Just around the dots for پ is a good height I guess.

On somehow unrelated note; Is there something like a "lower meanline" in Perso-Arabic typography which is between baseline and descent?

Everybody can have their own opinion and taste about this. It can also change from type to type. Font design tools allow designers to have as many horizontal guides as they like. FWIW, I think that at least three helpful lines can be drawn below the baseline: one to recognize height of bottom dots, one at the bottom of letters like ر and ن, and one at the end of letters like ع and م. 

I also saw this picture in this book, which might be interesting for you.

Of course, technically only one line is defined in the font files below baseline: descender. Thinking about how to relate these guidelines to the descender brings us back to the old question of “what do we actually mean when we say ‘set this [Arabic] type in 12 pt.’ ”

[Mostafa Hajizadeh]

BTW, sorry for the amateurish photo!

[Shervin Afshar]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:30 AM, Mostafa Hajizadeh <most...@gmail.com> wrote:

I also saw this picture in this book, which might be interesting for you.

This is the approach I've seen for Latin types and apparently is kind of a status quo (e.g. this diagram which I think is from "Thinking with Type"). It might even have been adapted to the needs of Perso-Arabic type by Mesghali.

BTW, sorry for the amateurish typography question! ;)