A Persian font requironments suitable to use as a web font

[Ebrahim Byagowi]

Hi. I've listed some requirements for building a suitable Persian web font on this Persian Wikipedia page.

 

Finally we want give this page to font designers so hearing your comments in this mailing list and also editing that page (like any Wikipedia page) is very welcomed.

[Bahman Eslami]

Hi Ebrahim,

Very good work but I have a comment:

I'm gonna regret opening this discussion but I prefer to say it at least once. There is no such thing as Italic or Iranic in perso-arabic script. If you use it in a persian text it's not going to affect the reader the way it affects a latin native reader (I know someone did an actual research on this and it was presented at TEDx tehran). I think the people who imported this style in farsi or arabic type were not familiar with the writing system. Italic style somehow is writing latin script very fast so it gives it the inclined look. ITALIC IS NOT SLANTED VERSION OF REGULAR FONT! it is has completely different structure. Please do not support using or developing this style it makes the letters look ugly in pero-arabic script!

I hope I didn't sound harsh but every time I see the "Iranic" word, it gives me headache! We have many different styles in our script that could become a style for a type family and they are not discovered yet. For example "shikasteh" style is the fast method of writing "nasta'liq" and it has slanted quality of italic in our script. I'm not saying that "shekasteh" is the solution but it could inspire an idea to design a new style instead of Iranic.

Keep up the good work,

Bahman

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Bahman Eslami
eslami.bahman {at} gmail.com
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On Mar 2, 2014, at 5:55 PM, Ebrahim Byagowi <ebra...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi. I've listed some requirements for building a suitable Persian web font on this Persian Wikipedia page.

 

Finally we want give this page to font designers so hearing your comments in this mailing list and also editing that page (like any Wikipedia page) is very welcomed.

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[Ebrahim Byagowi]

I made aware of this due previous discussions on P-C but your comment here is very valuable. I hope to see your comments on other parts and aspects of it. For example is there something I've missed on web font difference with a print font? That would be very necessary for font designers as they usually designs print font rather than web suitable font.

But about italic, I completely understand your concerns but the problem is on Persian Wikipedia, users already used Italic widely I'd guess relied to it. The slanted/oblique/italic style is just something that is indicated on manual of style and its already use-cases are not simply replaceable other style. Lake of correct oblique also had made some problems for example we are forced to automatically put a NBSP before articles titles that MoS indicates must have italic style, compare this with this. Also due some bug on current our MediaWiki PDF renderer we must build italic version of our print font for its use. So having a italic (which called oblique on the most popular font on Persian TeX community, XB Zar) version of the web font is somehow needed for us even the fact it is something incorrect on Perso-Arabic script.

Using "shikasteh" is also interesting offer and actually I've linked you comment about it on that page already. Recently I saw on "Jameel Noori Nastaliq" the italic variant of the font was actually equivalent to "Jameel Noori Kasheeda". That was surprising for me at first but now is understandable. Thank you

[Bahman Eslami]

I made aware of this due previous discussions on P-C but your comment here is very valuable. I hope to see your comments on other parts and aspects of it. For example is there something I've missed on web font difference with a print font? That would be very necessary for font designers as they usually designs print font rather than web suitable font.

AFAIK many typefaces designed for print could be hinted and be perfectly viable for screen and web. Although there are some typeface specifically designed for screen (Verdana) and the designer approached a different method in designing glyphs. Number of these typefaces are few compared to the typeface designed for print and then hinted for screen. In my opinion designing specifically for screen is much harder due to pixel restrictions.

But about italic, I completely understand your concerns but the problem is on Persian Wikipedia, users already used Italic widely I'd guess relied to it. The slanted/oblique/italic style is just something that is indicated on manual of style and its already use-cases are not simply replaceable other style. Lake of correct oblique also had made some problems for example we are forced to automatically put a NBSP before articles titles that MoS indicates must have italic style, compare this with this. Also due some bug on current our MediaWiki PDF renderer we must build italic version of our print font for its use. So having a italic (which called oblique on the most popular font on Persian TeX community, XB Zar) version of the web font is somehow needed for us even the fact it is something incorrect on Perso-Arabic script.

I know about the ubiquity of italic in farsi and I don't feel any need to argue with you. About the angle of oblique fonts, angle of italic works better than Iranic because it doesn't cause a clash in multilingual text which happens in iranic, even it feels better. I hope someday we could come up with a better design for the style instead of just an oblique font.

At the end I have a concern that is created by reading discussions from the links of the page you provided. I red the word "standards" too many times in the discussions that this is a standard in farsi or that is not standard. Who defines standards? Microsoft? Tahoma? It's not right. We should not comply to a design if it's ubiquitous. There are many mistakes in design of arabic parts of this typeface that I'm afraid had become standard for readers and even using italic is the same mistake. We had a glorious background in our writing system. This is not the place to put blames on Microsoft but I don't see any way how to fix it. I hope you find it :)

Best,

Bahman

[Ebrahim Byagowi]

Thank you again. I'll try to reflect your comments (even just with linking you comment) but you are also able to edit any part of that Wikipedia page anytime/anywhere you feel somewhere needs correction.

 

About the standard, we were referring to Unicode. Do you think use of Persian digits (۱۲۳۴۵) when you inserted Arabic digits (12345) on fonts like B Nazanin fonts or replacing «ي» with «ی» just on presentation was right? No doubt these fonts are old and we can not see such errors on newer generated font but I just wanted their mistakes won't occur again on the new fonts. Second referring to standard also was criticizing Microsoft Tahoma as it is using same glyph for comma and thousand separator. I can say this is common error that a Windows user which through Wikipedia learnt about standard keyboard press Shift+2 instead Shift+7 for inserting Comma on text (because simply they can not see the difference). Tahoma was not Unicode compliant about this (till the recent version, that is shipped with Windows 8.1) and this is what I wanted to reflect.

[Bahman Eslami]

I was a wikipedia user before, but I couldn't keep up arguing with users when nobody listened to me and finally I gave up long ago (I designed the wikitionary logo). I'm completely in agreement with you about the thousand separator, difference of farsi character with arabic ones, digits and other things you mentioned here. These are about technical factors of fonts and my comment was about design of letters. In the discussions there seems to be an interest in design of farsi letters in Tahoma which was shocking for me. And some users were complaining about design of Iranian sans (I don't have any affiliation with the designer!) and how the letter seen is not standard in Iranian sans and Tahoma is the standard one. Anyway it's not the place to discuss it. Other than this I think you are on the right track. I'm a graduate from University of Tehran and if you get in contact with the teachers in course of graphic design, they could make this web font idea into a dissertation project for one of the students. I know you have pretty good chance there. Just ask for Mr. Sedaghat Jabbari he will definitely agree if you persist.

Best,

Bahman

-------------------------
Bahman Eslami
eslami.bahman {at} gmail.com
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[Ebrahim Byagowi]

Oh, I think things get much from then and I really hope you return :-(

That would be very nice and is actually what is needed I guess. I'll refer your message to my active FOSS friends on Tehran that I guess are able to talk about the matter and if is ok I'll contact you for more details. Thank you

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/persian-typography/65C4E361-5443-46A9-A2D3-A12706602B01%40gmail.com.

[Saleh Souzanchi]

درود بر شما. من قبلا هم اعلام امادگی کردم. مجدد هم اعلام میکنم. که می تونم در پیاده سازی فونت ویکی پدیا همکاری می کنم.

فقط باید بگید کدام فونت و چه امکاناتی رو مد نیاز دارید.

البته من طراح نیستم. فقط در مهندسی فونت و پیاده سازی اون می تونم همکاری داشته باشم.

On Sunday, March 2, 2014 5:55:19 PM UTC+3:30, Ebrahim Byagowi wrote:

[Ebrahim Byagowi]

Thanks for the interest. You may have a look at requirements page as we tried answer these recently.

Wikipedia generally encourage any effort on making free creative works with clear copyright status.

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