12 ms·
I'm Arab. And almost nothing on this article is accurate. Arabs are so behind on IT. But on fonts and design I can say they are one of the best on the world. T
by Mimick 11y ago
I'm Arab. And almost nothing on this article is accurate.
Arabs are so behind on IT. But on fonts and design I can say they are one of the best on the world. There's a huge number of open source Arab fonts on Arab websites.
It's not so hard to design an Arabic typeface, it's only more work. You need to work on every letter 3 times since it doesn't show up the same depends on were the letter is on the word (first, between two letters, or last) most of the letters need to only be edited depends on their place but a few are totally different. Note that you write Arabic letters "glowed?" to each others.
I think the things that stand on the face of Arabic fonts to be more used are that people used to Arial/Tahoma and that browsers aren't supporting downloading fonts smoothly yet.
Also if all software used UTF-8 by default it would be great. I see a lot of software trying to handle Arabic with some stupid hacks.
- scarmig 11y agoI have no idea why this comment has downvotes--what's wrong with it? If there is actually an inaccuracy in Mimick's argument, I'm eager to hear it, as a naif in Arabic typography.
- eru 11y agoIt's best to ignore early downvotes.
- tempodox 11y agoDownvotes should be deactivated. If someone really disagrees, they should do better than just throw zero bits at people without explanation. Downvotes only cause confusion and don't improve the conversation any.
- Retra 11y agoDown-votes are a way of distinguishing between posts that actively degrade the environment versus those that are just passive noise (like redundant comments.) Fanatical behavior thrives without them.
- _nedR 11y agoI am also wondering whether this a submarine PR piece for the startup mentioned in the article - TPTQ Arabic. The founder was the primary source for pretty much the entire article. If there were other people quoted (like actual arab newspaper editors, bloggers, web designers, app devs, or even arab readers) i would be less skeptical.
- Mimick 11y agoSometimes authors try to exaggerate to get that "wow!" from the reader. It happens a lot when an author is telling you about a culture or climate you don't know about.
- _nedR 11y agoI am not concerned as much by the loftiness of the claims (i honestly don't have much reference to judge them by), as i am worried about the lack of sources cited for the claims.
- scrollaway 11y ago> "glowed?" "Glued" was the word you were looking for, "attached" or "connected" is the word you actually are looking for. It's a familiar concept to anyone who's written in cursive, which would include most of western europe actually (though in latin-alphabet cursive scripts, letters don't change that much based on their position, just the connection).
- eru 11y agoLigatures. We have lots of them in old German fonts (Fraktur), too.
- scrollaway 11y agoLigatures are more specific to things such as œ, æ, etc.
- ajuc 11y agoIn German you could argue uppercase letters are word-starting versions of lowercase letters.
- infimum 11y agoOnly if the word is noun. Also by the same reasoning uppercase letters are sentence-starting in english (not to speak of capitalized names and 'I' and all that stuff).
- eru 11y agoI tried writing English-style German. It might look like this: Palm Ström, etwas schon an jahren, wird an einer straßen beuge und von einem kraft fahr zeuge über fahren. »Wie war« (spricht er, sich erhebend und entschlossen weiter lebend) »möglich, wie dies unglück, ja –: daß es über haupt geschah? Ist die staats kunst an zu klagen in bezug auf kraft fahr wagen? Gab die polizei vorschrift hier dem fahrer freie trift? Oder war viel mehr verboten, hier lebendige zu toten um zu wandeln, – kurz und schlicht: durfte hier der kutscher nicht –?« Ein gehüllt in feuchte tücher, prüft er die gesetzes bücher und ist also bald im klaren: Wagen durften dort nicht fahren! Und er kommt zu dem ergebnis: »Nur ein traum war das erlebnis. Weil«, so schließt er messer scharf, »nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf.«
- gotchange 11y agoI have to disagree with you on the point that designing an Arabic font is an easy feat, unfortunately it isn't. Maybe for the run-of-the-mill, cookie-cutter typeface, this could be true but if you'd like to import a certain style to the Arabic script, you'd face the usual constraints and limitations of the Arabic letters that they are not as malleable and flexible as their Latin counterparts esp. if you're aiming for 100% style consistency and uniformity across the set. This is a fixed monospaced Arabic font [0] and I'm pretty sure it took the author a whole lot of time and effort to pull this great work off. [0]: http://makkuk.com/kawkab-mono/ http://makkuk.com/kawkab-mono/
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Mimick 11y agoThere's almost no use for a fixed monospaced Arabic font on Arabic, and even so there's plenty. Most designed Arabic fonts I see today are for the purpose to be used on other designs like on Photoshop, and there's like more freedom and coolness on them than a good font that you will want to publish a book with or use it on your blog. I think it's the same reason Japan still sticking with their old school looking websites, we are still sticking with our old school fonts. I think also when there's not much Arabs on big IT company, you never have that Arab guy that can advice that shipping good Arabic fonts on the next OS will be good (except for Linux(s)... Arabic fonts are fine there). I notice also the Arabic version on popular websites normally have a poor choices of words.