One of the most advanced and most beautiful Arabic OT Naskh fonts

[John Hudson]

You lookup description explains the selection of the alternate letterforms preceding the kashida(s) but not ligation or swallowing of the kashida glyphs themselves. So, for instance, the substitution

behinitial.two -> behinitial.three
| tatweel tatweel tatweel

results in the glyph string

/behinitial.three/tatweel/tatweel/tatweel/

I have similar 'calt' lookups to handle all my letter variant substitutions too (although I've already decomposed to archigraphemes by this point, so I'm handling a generic 'B' initial letter without dots rather than 'beh'). What I am wondering is how you handle the tatweel glyphs themselves.
_____

This is the sort of thing I am doing with Aldhabi. The elongations are independent strokes of varying length that are designed to flow into contextually selected letterforms. The right side joining of the elongation is a standard shape, allowing the preceding letterform to be selected based on the presence of the elongation. The left side joining of the elongation varies, so I have an elongation stroke of each length for each of eight different left join shapes. All this was worked out by the designer, Tim Holloway. He designed the narrowest elongation of each join shape and the widest, and an intermediate 'standard' elongation, and then I used interpolation to create all the others.

[Zuhair Albazi]

Very nice font with so much ligation. The elongated tatweels are very beautiful and charming. Congratulations, Great work.

What I am wondering is how you handle the tatweel glyphs themselves.

The glyph string really becomes

/behinitial.three/tatweel/tatweel/tatweel/

in my font as described by you.

Actually in my font the tatweel at such places changes to alternate glyph tatweel.alt and the tatweel.alt is an empty glyph with some width. In simple words tatweel.alt glyph is similar to space glyph. While behinitial, behinitial.one, behinitial.two and behinitial.three has the same width i.e. width metrics but having long elongations going far away from glyph width metrics. So their elongations go far crossing the width metrics covering the empty spaces of tatweel.alt

Thanks,

[John Hudson]

Ah. That's sort of clever but complicated, and doesn't it lead to complexities in the left connection of the elongated initial? An alternative solution for you would be simply to make your elongated initial forms full width and swallow the tatweel glyphs as I so:

behinitial.three tatweel tatweel tatweel -> behinitial.three

That seems simpler, I think, and means that you can apply 'curs' attachment directly from the /behinitial.three/ to a connecting letterforms on the left.

[John Hudson]

Okay, this is clever. :)

[Zuhair Albazi]

Tim Holloway designed the narrowest elongation of each join shape and the widest, and an intermediate 'standard' elongation, and then I used interpolation to create all the others.

It is interesting to know that you created the other elongations by interpolation using narrowest, intermediate and widest elongations.

John, If you could explain the interpolation method with some detail and images. It will be quite helpful in creating several calligraphic tatweel levels.

Thanks,

[John Hudson]

My approach was a simple one, using FontLab's 'Blend Fonts' function (Tools menu). I created separate .vfb sources for each width of elongation stroke. Then I used the 'Blend Fonts' function to create Multiple Master width sources (one for narrowest to standard elongation, one for standard to widest elongation; it would be possible, of course, to do this with only the narrowest and widest, but Tim wanted more control over the shape in the most common intermediate widths, which correspond to the swash sin). Once I had the Multiple Master sources, I went into FontLab's 'Edit Axis Graph' dialogue (Tools / Multiple Master menu) and set the low and high values to match the actual advance width of the two elongation masters in UPM font units; this allowed me to specify and generate discreet intermediate instances based on precise widths.

[Zuhair Albazi]

doesn't it lead to complexities in the left connection of the elongated initial?

I did not face any complexity in the left connection as right from the beginning I made the left glyphs accordingly.

An alternative solution for you would be simply to make your elongated initial forms full width and swallow the tatweel glyphs as I so:
behinitial.three tatweel tatweel tatweel -> behinitial.three
That seems simpler, I think, and means that you can apply 'curs' attachment directly from the /behinitial.three/ to a connecting letterforms on the left.

It is also a good approach. Before adding calligraphic tatweels to my font I tested several approaches and I remember I have also tried something like this in the beginning.

behinitial tatweel tatweel tatweel -> behinitial.three

In this case there are at least two benefits. (1) No need to make separate glyph of tatweel.alt (2) direct cursive attachment towards left side letter.

But I adopted the other approach so that the marks can be placed on tatweel.alt and they appear on the the elongated letter accordingly as in the image.

In first line words have a single tatweel, in second line have two tatweels and in third line have three tatweels. The mark length auto-increase with increasing tatweel length and if another mark is placed after first, second or third tatweel then the first mark length auto-decrease accordingly.

If I adopt the above described new approach and make the elongated glyph several components for marks placement then the marks will require a lot of work and much positioning data that is not possible in my font. So in my font the marks placement on tatweel.alt saved me from thousands of mark positions

Thanks,

[Zuhair Albazi]

Thank you for the valuable information.

[Zuhair Albazi]

Expanded Space has been added to features list.
Now the the user will have the choice of applying any of three kinds of spaces.

1- Condensed Space
2- Default Normal Space
3- Expanded Space

[Muhammad Rashid Shaikh]

محترم جناب زہیر البازی صاحبب
السلام علیکم ورحمۃ اللہ وبرکاتہ

میں کئی روز سے آپ کا ٹائپو فائل پر کام دیکھ رہاہوں اور یہ سوچ رہا تھا کہ ماضی کے تقریبا تین عشروں پر مشتمل فن خطاطی سے تعلق کی بنا پرکچھ عرض کروں۔آج کچھ فرصت ملی ہے تو کچھ لکھتا ہوں۔ سب سے پہلے تو میں آ پ کو خط نسخ کے اس نئے فوتٹ کو ڈویلپ کرنےپرمبارک باد پیش کرتا ہوں۔جیسا کہ آپ کے علم میں ہے کہ علم و تحقیق کا کارواں سدا چلتا رہتاہے اور انسانی فطرت کے مطابق لوگ خوب سےخوب تر کی تلا ش جاری رکھتے ہیں۔راقم الحروف گزشتہ تین دہائیوں سے فن خطاطی کا ادنی طالب علم ہے اور اس موضوع پر دوکتب کامولف بھی ۔وہ دوکتب یہ ہیں
۔تذکرہ خطاطین جس میں عالم اسلا م کے بیس نامور خطاطوں کےحالات ،خدمات اور تین سو سے زائد نوادر محفوظ ہیں
۔مقالات خطاطی سیّد نفیس الحسینیؓ

آج کل میں ایک نئے فونٹ کو ڈویلپ کر نےکے لیے کوشاں ہوں اورامید ہے کہ اس بارے میں آپ کا تعاون اورماہرانہ مشورے مجھے حاصل رہیں گے۔دراصل میری دلی خواہش ہے کہ لاہوری نستعلیق کر ایک خوبصورت فونٹ ڈویلپ کروں جو فن خطاطی کے تمام محاسن اور جمالیاتی خوبیوں کا مجموعہ ہو۔افسو ہے اب تک کوئی ایسا فونٹ تیار نہ ہوسکا۔راقم کی ناچیز رائے میں اس کی بڑی وجہ یہ رہی کہ تریبا تمام فونٹ کریکٹر بیسڈ ہیں جس کی وجہ سے جوڑوں اورپیوند وں میں وہ حسن نہ آسکا جوخطاط کے قلم سے ممکن ہے۔دوسری وجہ یہ ہوئی کہ عموما فونٹ پرکام کرنےوالے فن خطاطی کی باریکیوں سے ناواقف پائے گئے جبکہ خوبصورت فونٹ تیار کرنےکے لیے یہ بنیادی شرط ہے۔
بہر حال مختصرا عرض ہے کہ اس بارے میں راقم نےاپنے مطالعے کے بعد جو طریقہ کار وضع کیاہے اس میں تین پروگراموں سے مدد لی جائے گی یعنی
1.Adobe Illustrator
2.Font Developer
3.MS Volt
ان میں سے پہلے پروگرام کی مدد سے خطاطی کے دستیاب لیگیچرز کی آئوٹ لائن بنائی جائے گی۔دوسرے پرگرام لیگیچرز اورچند گلپس اور تیسرے کی مدد پر پروگرامنگ۔
میری آپ سے گزارش ہے کہ اپنے تجربےکی بنیاد پرمطلع فرمائیں کہ کیااس عمل کومزیدمختصر کرناممکن ہےاور کیایہ ممکن ہے کہ ابتدائی دو پروگراموں کی جگہ صرف ایک پروگرام یعنی
Fontlab
استعمال کیا جائے اورکس طرح استعمال کیاجائے۔
میں آپ کے مثبت جواب کا منتظر رہوںگا۔
اگر آپ راقم کی ناچیزعلمی خدمات سےآگاہی حاصل کرنا چاہیں تویہاں ملاحظہ فرمائیں

www.openlibrary.com/authors/Muhammad Rashid Shaikh
عید کی پیشگی مبارک بادکے ساتھ آپ سے اجازب

محمد راشد شیخ

[Zuhair Albazi]

I suggest instead of further asking you should test fontlab also. If you have the practical knowledge of font creator then it will not be difficult for you. I have not used font creator so do not know much about it. Also there is much material about fontlab that you can easily find on web. In fontlab you can also copy and paste directly from illustrator. It is one of the most wide spread font tool used by top type designers but it has some limitation.

It allows maximum 6399 glyphs per file or per font. Looking at your ambitions it will not fulfill your need as 6399 is very small number of glyphs for a ligature based Nastaleeq font that may contain much large number of glyphs. In this case you may try Asia Font Studio that support up to 65,535 glyphs per file. It has almost same interface and same functions as Fontlab Studio so if you get satisfied with fontlab then you may start work in Asia Font Studio.

In short, you have to test these software by yourself to find out which one is easy for you and which one gives best output outlines in a font.

[quadibloc]

@Ryan Maelhorn:
What makes this the most beautiful Arabic font? Although it seems to be quite the workhorse as far as allowing users to change things around, overall the outlines look rather lazy and bland to me.

Except for fonts which are limited to special software (InDesign) this is the only Arabic font to properly support the script, instead of taking ugly shortcuts.

Also, since English is not the original poster's first language, I'm willing to allow that the "One of" in the title was intended to apply to "the most beautiful" as well as "the most advanced" (to achieve the proper idiomatic English parallel construction, it should have been "One of the most advanced and most beautiful Arabic OT Naskh Fonts").

I am no judge of Arabic script aesthetics, but the typeface appeared to me to have a pleasing shape with no obvious need for improvement.

[Muhammad Rashid Shaikh]

Dear Zuhair Albazi
Thank u for your reply. I am trying to work on fontlab and also on asia font studio as u suggested.
Did u have any connection with late Syed Nafees ul Husaini(RA) because I have seen titles of many books written by Shaikh Musa Al Baazi(RA) in beautiful calligraphy of Syed Nafees ul Husaini,

R

[Zuhair Albazi]

@quadibloc.
John, thank you for liking and appreciating the font and for your nice comments about it. I have corrected the title of the topic according to your suggestion.

@Rashid.
I met two or three times with Syed Nafees Shah (RA), who was one of the biggest calligraphers in the subcontinent. My elder brother Maulana Zubair Albazi has also got khilafah (Ijazah) from him.

[Muhammad Rashid Shaikh]

Dear Zuhair Albazi Sahib
Thank u for reply. Pl. inform your cell phone and also note my cell nr. 0321-2099742. Pl. inform about e mail address also.
Waiting your reply

Muhammad Rashid Shaikh

[Zuhair Albazi]

You may contact me on zuhairbazi at gmail dot com.

[Zuhair Albazi]

Here is a new pdf file, containing Zuhair Albazi Naskh typeface samples, to check the printouts of the font at smaller, document level text size. The text pages contain Regular style as well as Bold style.

The PDF is created from Microsoft Word 2010.

Download link of the sample PDF file

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?3as61an27y1ojvb

[Ri993d]

Zulhair, I am new to this site. Is this font available for download?

Your work looks very promising and I'd like to try it out for myself.

[Zuhair Albazi]

@Ri993d
Many Thanks for liking the font.

Till yet I have not released the font. I think releasing will take some time. If you like to be informed at the time of release then please send your email address at alqalam777 at gmail dot com.

Thanks,

[Zuhair Albazi]

Dear Hrant,

About 10 days have passed I have been continuously trying to post a new thread but could not succeeded. It always says 500 server internal error. I also tried with different computers with different net connections and also with other typophile accounts but all in vain. I also tried several times to connect the moderators but there was no outcome. I am able to comment on older posts but unable to create new posts. Please help me to solve the problem.

Thanks,
Muhammad Zuhair Albazi

[hrant]

Sorry, I have no admin privileges here. I could only do what you could do: email Punchcut.

hhp

[oldnick]

Wow, guys: when you decide to shun someone, you do a hell of a job…

http://www.typophile.com/node/98032

[Zuhair Albazi]

Thanks, for your kind reply.

[Zuhair Albazi]

Hi,

Happy New Islamic Year 1434H to all typophiles

[moiz217]

Hello,
Congratulations Zuhair AlBazi for this extra ordinary work. The font is really high quality and nicely done. Especially the tatweel feature is very professionally implemented.

One question that might benefit many font developers is how do you substitute short diacritic marks with long marks when preceded by tatweel.

Thanks and regards.