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Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

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Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#41

Post by ValdikSS »

Conscat wrote: post #12
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #2

This problem is not limited to Arabic. Variants of the arabic alphabet are used by Persian (including Iranian and Dari dialects), Mazanderani, Qashqai, Luri, Gilaki, Kurdish (excluding Kurds in Turkey), Talysh, Azerbaijani (in Iran), Pamir languages, Pashto, Urdu, Balochi, Sindhi (in Pakistan), Punjabi (in Pakistan), Uzbek (in Afghanistan), Turkmen (in Afghanistan), Saraiki, Hindko, Brahui, languages spoken in Kashmi…

I feel like I've never gotten a compelling explanation for why Nastaliq is hard/unavailable. I'm not an expert on abjads, but it doesn't look harder to render then Naskh (and it self-evidently is possible since the fonts exist). Does anyone here know why they make it difficult? Urdu is much less obscure than, say, Sharada or other languages with Unicode support. I think Punjabi is also often written in Nastaliq when…

>compelling explanation for why Nastaliq is hard/unavailable

https://www.tiro.com/John/TypeCon2014_Hudson_DECK.pdf

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#42

Post by linmer »

mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #3
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #2

This problem is not limited to Arabic. Variants of the arabic alphabet are used by Persian (including Iranian and Dari dialects), Mazanderani, Qashqai, Luri, Gilaki, Kurdish (excluding Kurds in Turkey), Talysh, Azerbaijani (in Iran), Pamir languages, Pashto, Urdu, Balochi, Sindhi (in Pakistan), Punjabi (in Pakistan), Uzbek (in Afghanistan), Turkmen (in Afghanistan), Saraiki, Hindko, Brahui, languages spoken in Kashmi…

I don't know why people look down their noses at Arabizi

I looked at Arabizi and the numbers are really annoying for formal text etc. Finglish is better in my opinion, however it causes problems like being able to read the same text in two ways. like "dar". The a can be like 'a' in 'dad' or it can be 'a' like in 'car'. with different pronunciation it means 'door' and 'gallow' which can be very annoying in Arabic languages that unlike Persian write _ُ_ِ_ٌ_ً_ٍ_ّ_. Instead of numbers it uses combinations like 'kh' for 'خ', 'gh' for 'ق' and 'غ'. In some methods they use 'aa' for 'a' sound like 'bar' and single 'a' for 'a' sound like 'lad'.

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#44

Post by Panzerschrek »

linmer wrote: post #34
Panzerschrek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's objectively so horrible. Letters have similar form to each other, joints between them makes it harder to take them apart. As I understand, Arabic alphabet wasn't designed to be practical for daily use and only for writing sacred texts.

If you think Arabic horrible because it has connected letters, so is cursive. But I like both cursive and Arabic. You can easily distinguish separate words as the words' letters are connected, and you don't have to put less space to show that some letters are making a word. It's not optimized for printing and digital fonts I agree. But you can't say it's not useful for daily use. It's so much easier on paper.

> But I like both cursive and Arabic

Just a personal esthetic (unpractical) preference.

> It's not optimized for printing and digital fonts I agree. But you can't say it's not useful for daily use.

These two sentences contradict each other. Daily use means printing and reading from screen.

> It's so much easier on paper.

Only if one writes by-hand. Which is unpractical since like press printing has been invented.

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#45

Post by bradrn »

linmer wrote: post #37
bradrn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Naskh, each letter has only four forms (for the most part — there are a few ligatures etc. but I think ‘only four forms’ remains basically true). The choice between forms is determined almost entirely by position within a word (initial/medial/final/isolated). All the letters are aligned along the baseline and connect to each other in basically the same way. By contrast Nastaliq is a much more complicated style. Ma…

Yeah, but the difficulty isn't in rendering the fonts, it's for the font creator. So once the font is ready with all the combinations it rendering and using a Nastaliq font doesn't differ with rendering a Naskh. Nastaliq fonts are available in Persian, not sure if true for other languages, but it's just more complexity on making the font. For using a ready font the only thing needed is permission to change the font.

Yep, that’s what I meant; thanks for clarifying the point.

(Though that said, a sibling post linked this interesting talk on limitations in OpenType itself: https://www.tiro.com/John/TypeCon2014_Hudson_DECK.pdf)

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#46

Post by Panzerschrek »

theobreuerweil wrote: post #36
Panzerschrek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's objectively so horrible. Letters have similar form to each other, joints between them makes it harder to take them apart. As I understand, Arabic alphabet wasn't designed to be practical for daily use and only for writing sacred texts.

How can you describe something as “objectively” horrible-looking? Your opinion on the way that something looks is precisely that: an opinion. I’d add that neither the Arabic nor Latin alphabets were designed for anything. They both evolved organically from other previous alphabets.

> an opinion

I didn't read my comment properly. I have written, why Arabic alphabet is horrible. It's all cursive and letters aren't different enough from each other.

> I’d add that neither the Arabic nor Latin alphabets were designed for anything. They both evolved organically from other previous alphabets.

Many alphabets evolved from a need for daily stuff like accounting, where practicality matters. Arabs didn't have widespread alphabet until they needed writing their sacred texts, so, they have invented an alphabet primary designed for that. Other alphabetical systems were already widespread in the regions currently dominated by the Arabic alphabet and many of them look much better.

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#47

Post by ablob »

bradrn wrote: post #29
Conscat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I've never gotten a compelling explanation for why Nastaliq is hard/unavailable. I'm not an expert on abjads, but it doesn't look harder to render then Naskh (and it self-evidently is possible since the fonts exist). Does anyone here know why they make it difficult? Urdu is much less obscure than, say, Sharada or other languages with Unicode support. I think Punjabi is also often written in Nastaliq when…

In Naskh, each letter has only four forms (for the most part — there are a few ligatures etc. but I think ‘only four forms’ remains basically true). The choice between forms is determined almost entirely by position within a word (initial/medial/final/isolated). All the letters are aligned along the baseline and connect to each other in basically the same way. By contrast Nastaliq is a much more complicated style. Ma…

afaik this is a non-issue with modern text rendering engines. Modern font files include rulesets to determine the forms and shaping engines apply these rules to eventually reach the desired "shape" (i.e. order, position and which glyphs to render). For example, if you use HarfBuzz it should be able to calculate the Glyphs and offsets you need for a properly set script.

I personally spent way to much time trying to understand it, but at least according to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaA0v0V4RsU) it really is not that difficult if you leave out all the font-selection and emoji shenanigans.

I think at least FreeType (glyph rendering) and HarfBuzz (text shaping) make it needlessly complex through their documentation. It is extensive in describing what the parts do, but the only way to figure out what you need is by fiddling around. As soon as you want to do more complex stuff you're on your own. Especially figuring out which parts you don't need is annoying.

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#48

Post by linmer »

mohsen1 wrote: post #38

It's 2026 and things like kashida in CSS is not possible. Long way to go to support the Arabic script properly on the web. And as the article says, since most of the writing is happening on computers, stuff like kashida are going to be forgotten soon.

Hmm. by kashida do you mean something like 'ایـــــــــــــن'?

I don't think you mean this, because I don't know how would you do it in CSS. Looks more like a problem to be solved with different types of character than styling.

You may want to explain more.

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#49

Post by Panzerschrek »

mxchelsemaan wrote: post #32
Panzerschrek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's objectively so horrible. Letters have similar form to each other, joints between them makes it harder to take them apart. As I understand, Arabic alphabet wasn't designed to be practical for daily use and only for writing sacred texts.

>As I understand, Arabic alphabet wasn't designed to be practical for daily use and only for writing sacred texts. You clearly don't. Arabic was the premier language for philosophy, science, and mathematics in the middle ages. Algebra, algorithms, zero, cipher, average, and so on are all etymologically Arabic. One might start to suspect bigotry from a "Panzerschrek." >Letters have similar form to each other, joints b…

> Arabic was the premier language for philosophy, science

But this was not for ordinary people (peasants) or even accountants, where practicality matters.

> Your brain is not powerful enough to pattern-match, but your incapacity is not universal

With some training it's possible to read Arabic texts. But this requires more mental load and practice compared to other alphabetical systems.

> Literal billions in the world disagree

Argumentum ad populum. There also billions of people using even worse writing systems - non-alphabetical ones. This doesn't mean that they are as good as alphabetical systems like latin.

The video you linked has nothing to do with practicality. It's about calligraphy, which is an art form. It may look good, but it doesn't matter for daily use when one needs to read and type a lot.

Re: Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

#50

Post by mxchelsemaan »

Panzerschrek wrote: post #49
mxchelsemaan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As I understand, Arabic alphabet wasn't designed to be practical for daily use and only for writing sacred texts. You clearly don't. Arabic was the premier language for philosophy, science, and mathematics in the middle ages. Algebra, algorithms, zero, cipher, average, and so on are all etymologically Arabic. One might start to suspect bigotry from a "Panzerschrek." >Letters have similar form to each other, joints b…

> Arabic was the premier language for philosophy, science But this was not for ordinary people (peasants) or even accountants, where practicality matters. > Your brain is not powerful enough to pattern-match, but your incapacity is not universal With some training it's possible to read Arabic texts. But this requires more mental load and practice compared to other alphabetical systems. > Literal billions in the world…

> But this was not for ordinary people (peasants) or even accountants, where practicality matters.

All peasant societies were illiterate, including Latin script adopters. Completely irrelevant to Arabic.

"Or even accountants" - apparently, Arabs didn't trade! It's not like Muhammad himself was, you know, a trader and an accountant...

> With some training it's possible to read Arabic texts. But this requires more mental load and practice compared to other alphabetical systems.

Perhaps your brain is too slow. I and many other bilinguals read Arabic even more quickly and efficiently than Latin-script languages. The words are terser and are read as units as opposed to the inefficient character-by-character Latin system. Speed-reading doesn't exist in Arabic because Arabic is already speedily read.

> It may look good, but it doesn't matter for daily use when one needs to read and type a lot.

You just said it was objectively horrible looking above. But consistency cannot be expected of a jumbled mind.

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