Such medial Heh...

[froo]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

I am just curious if such a form of very open lower counter (or even bigger), as presented on the left side, could be accepted?

[AzizMostafa]

All Acceptable!
Good Luck

[Badr Oraby]

Acceptable, but must be familiar with the rest of the characters, in both size and character width.
Good work.

Badr

[Bahman Eslami]

first one from the right and middle one have a relatively large black areas when the stroke overlaps or creates a conjunction, which could make the glyph heavier in a text.

keep up the good work.

[froo]

Thank you all!
It was something that often returned to my sketches and didn't give me peace, as it seemed to solve the "black spot" problem and offered a kind of unification/ repetition of some final forms' details.

[khalid]

Don't agree much with the last (leftmost). The first one however, is beautiful.

Khalid
ArabicType

[froo]

I also am not convinced. Anyway, it causes collisions.

[Khaled Hosny]

I like the middle one most, the rightmost is acceptable too, the left most is bulky and don't even follow how medial heh is written (the middle one is very common in handwriting as well as calligraphy, but the rightmost is Naskhi form).

[AzizMostafa]

… @, &, + 8 are easily converted into alternative Hehes?!

[froo]

I think I should give explanations. I am not a fan of opening counters and loops. I find very often the black knot of Ain much more legible than the opened one. That's the flavour of Arabic script. But some designs demand more regular gray pattern.

As I am not a native speaker, I am framed by things I have seen and learned. So in some cases, to go forward, there is no other way but formulate hypothesis. So I put here that the initial/incoming and the second strokes of Heh are of the same origin:

Because there are numerous open variants of the Letter, I supposed it was possible to shorten the incoming stroke, removing the black area while still having two ears of Heh. Now I am sure, that changing the shape was a wrong way. But what do you think of this approach as shown below?

(Scherezade; the initial form unchanged)

[hrant]

> I am not a fan of opening counters and loops.

It can certainly be taken too far.
Because even color per se is actually bad for reading.

hhp

[John Hudson]

I don't think this works, Marcin -- your modified Scheherazade on the right -- because the effect seems to be of a letter sloppily written rather than a new form. In the traditional open form (centre in your original image) the construction is clearly different from the closed form: the pen moves downwards from the horizontal instead of making a reversal. Your form looks like someone has tried to make the closed form but hasn't quite carried the stroke far enough.

[froo]

I probably get the rule now: the letter needs the strong vertical factor. Then, as we say, one must not repair working things.

Last question: what causes that some type designs repeat the initial form in the medial glyph? Is it a search for regularity?

[Bahman Eslami]

@Marcin
Last question: what causes that some type designs repeat the initial form in the medial glyph? Is it a search for regularity?

No, it's called simplified arabic, in the past typewriters couldn't handle all of arabic forms in a single keyboard, so linotype AFAIK created yakout to reduce number of glyphs. so initial and medial forms in most cases are same, this also happens in most of final and isolated form. this tradition is continuing until now but I don't know the reason, because there is no such limitations in opentype.

Bahman

[Badr Oraby]

@ Froo

You should know that the Traditional Naskh does not have such an open medial haa, but in Thuluth there are the two faces: open and closed, & more.
When I saw that the examples you have made an acceptable condition is that the chosen shape for haa is harmonious with the rest of the letters, and this means that we shy away from the Traditional Naskh and we are creating a font recently with different specifications.
This font may be derived from the traditional versions, but the fabric alone, away or close to it, as you see in your design.

With success

Badr Oraby

[John Hudson]

Bahman, while it is true that most letters in the Simplified Arabic scheme shared initial/medial and isolated/final forms, this was not the case with heh, which was an exception to that practice in Yakout. You can confirm this if you enter ه ههه in the Yakout text sample on Myfonts.

The fonts I have seen in which the medial heh takes the shape of the initial tend to be fairly recent designs, and it seems to be a stylistic decision rather than a technical solution à la Simplified Arabic. Some examples:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hibastudio/hasan-hiba/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/hakim-ghazali/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/isra/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/sultan-nahia/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/firas/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/insan/

Interestingly, several of these were winners in the Linotype Arabic type design competition, and produced around the same time but by different people.

[hrant]

I wonder if this recent taming (to me, neutering) of the heh is
actually a result of the increasing Arab desire to be "modern".

And interestingly, it's the letter for this same "h" sound that
has suffered the most in the Latinization of Armenian...

hhp

[froo]

I work with the traditional open form. The other catched the eye too much.
But for example, such word as "Isfahan", handwritten in Nasta'liq with bulky Heh, gets some kind of a boost - an additional, eclectic, vernacular flavour . So, probably as with other ideas, that would do some work in custom lettering rather than in a typeface.

Thank you for explanation about the initial/medial issue.

[Bahman Eslami]

@john
The fonts I have seen in which the medial heh takes the shape of the initial tend to be fairly recent designs, and it seems to be a stylistic decision rather than a technical solution à la Simplified Arabic.

I think this decision also relates to that fact that making simplified arabic is much less time consuming and more convenient for the designer, not because number of designed glyphs are reduced, also in this style the designer doesn't have to match connecting parts of every glyphs with each other, baseline becomes straight and you don't have to worry about "oh I don't know if the connection between "gaf" and "jim" would be good but "jim" wouldn't match with other glyphs like "ra" and so on". cursive baseline needs a lot of effort. I saw new designs of cursive baseline that the baseline is not harmonized through the glyphs so when you are reading a text it's like you are surfing on a stormy ocean, moving up and down.

[John Hudson]

Badr, that's a nice illustration. Is this from a book? Which one?

[Badr Oraby]

John
This explanation written by calligrapher named Mukhtar Aalem.
There are a lot of references like this in Arabic Calligraphy found on this page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/%D9%85%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%B3%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%A...

In particular for Naskh:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.319217144786343.72892.192106934...
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.310843638957027.71127.192106934...
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.287228231318568.66333.192106934...
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.209907859050606.51045.192106934...
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.209909005717158.51046.192106934...

Enjoy