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Dynamic Arabic,Jawi,Urdu+Kurdish Fonts for M$ Office, InDesignCS5 + CorelDrawX5

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k.l.

k.l.

Posted
Posted

Bypassing noise, I emphasize again the fallacies of tasmeem
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/56166-forwarding#comment-284286
Arabic is a dynamic script. So, it is:
1. incorrect to apply Spacing/Shaping parameters to line(s) of text.
2. impractical (time-consuming + tedious) to adjust word by word.

The post to which you refer is a nice reminder that you have not understood Milo's replies back then. As he pointed out there, ACE/Tasmeem do not follow the usual spacing + kerning method, it uses a different method for defining spaces between letters and words.

ACE is literally the embodiment of the recognition that "Arabic is a dynamic script" so possibly you tell Milo old news. And ACE's above-mentioned different approach to spacing, by the way, is just logical consequence of this recognition.
ad 1 -- This may be true in the context of usual spacing + kerning method. But as said, ACE uses another method. Hence, a mere debater's point.
ad 2: -- Your example above indicates that with MirEmad, words are composed by pulling every individual piece to its proper place manually. Now this is what I would call "impractical (time-consuming + tedious)". ACE/Tasmeem does all of this automatically, so you can do manual adjustments if you feel like it but you do not need to.

You are argueing against your own misunderstandings and ascribe to ACE the problems that MirEmad seems to have. I have a hard time to make sense of this.

AzizMostafa

AzizMostafa

Posted
  • Author
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Above example was carried out with the 2-years old TTFont of Nastaliq just to demo the power of MireEmad in moving letters up+down, right+left by selecting them + pressing Alt + arrow keys. That font has been rebuilt (not released yet) with zero-spaces (automatic kerning) between letters and minimized spaces between words to be widened manually when necessary.

In One word, MirEmad does automatic kering for both Typographical + Calligraphical fonts. And it does automatic word spacing for Typographical fonts like Adobe Arabic. But manual word spacing for calligraphical fonts like Rayhan.

@ Tasmeem uses a different method for defining spaces between letters and words.

1. How does Tasmeem define spaces between Letters? By example please.
2. How does Tasmeem define spaces between Words? By example please.
3. Putting aside the unhappy ligatures, mark-positioning, Kerning and Word-spacing, of page 5/7 from http://www.fontworld.com/mepdf/Tasmeem4.pdf is messy. Why?!

Sorry, my timetable does not allow me to come back before next Monday.
So, please take your time to reply with Pictures.

Download FDI Neumeister free of charge …
k.l.

k.l.

Posted
Posted

1. How does Tasmeem define spaces between Letters? By example please.
2. How does Tasmeem define spaces between Words? By example please.

For reproduction purposes?

3. Putting aside the unhappy ligatures, mark-positioning, Kerning and Word-spacing ... is messy. Why?!

What exactly are you referring to? The page is crammed with images. "Unhappy" and "messy" is too vague to address. And how does MirEmad do better?

AzizMostafa

AzizMostafa

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  • Author
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@ For reproduction purposes?

Reproduction of what?! Our method is more expensive!

@ What exactly are you referring to?

The Whole Arabic text done in the Naskh style on page 5.
Though manually handled, the last line of the white text on the blue background is messy! Just one line of many!
Can you repeat it - the very line of text - 3 times
and post the 3-line sample?!

@ And how does MirEmad do better?
For reproduction purposes?

Working hard overtime with Flowers

  • 3 weeks later...
Saad Abulhab

Saad Abulhab

Posted
Posted

Aziz wrote:

4. Will M$ consent to our Additions (not changes)? Too late?
5. Or considers it unforgivable/inapplicable tool?
6. And/Or redoes+confiscates the invaluable tool?

Aziz, I know that Microsoft licenses different customized versions of usp10.dll. May be you should approach it that way. Even better, you should have a separate dll(s), with different name(s), to handle the functionality of the ones you "hacked". Adobe Indesign ME uses its own replacement of usp10.dll, it seems, and leaves MS usp10.dll alone. This I think is the best way.

-Saad

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AzizMostafa

AzizMostafa

Posted
  • Author
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Grand Changes!
MirEmad has been redesigned with these 5 modifications::
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. All Thomas's Uninstalling recommendations worked out.
2. A Flying boat used in place of the reconstructed M$ bridge.
3. Fonts rebuilt to work straight on Adobe Applications as well as M$ Office.
4. No installation + No setup is necessary.
5. CD replaced with an exclusive plug+play USB Flash.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks All for the Feedback + Recommendations.

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quadibloc

quadibloc

Posted
Posted

I have some good news for the originator of this thread.

His font is not the first piece of software to modify Windows, and replace its existing copy of the file usp10.dll with another version. Microsoft Office does the same thing, according to the Wikipedia article I linked to.

A third-party update to support Malayalam is also noted.

A virus is a piece of software that copies itself to other computers, and so that term, at least, does not apply here. There could be legal implications, and there could be a danger of making other software not work right (if I already installed the custom version of the DLL that lets me work with Malayalam, that would certainly break, but I imagine that this is an unlikely scenario).

Note that some software that uses alternate versions of a DLL installs with that DLL in the software's own directory, so possibly putting the DLL in the directory of the (executable of) the word processor to be used with the font would be a better alternative - I don't know offhand under what conditions one can substitute a DLL in this way, but I do know that many software packages that come with their own versions of DLLs (a version from Microsoft being the particular update the software requires - many DLLs are redistributable) do such a thing.

quadibloc

quadibloc

Posted
Posted

Here is an article on the basic technical issue that is faced here; at one point, this was a major problem with Windows, back in the days of Windows 3.1, when DLLs were normally always shared among all applications.

Customizing usp10.dll, however, does seem to be a common practice for those wishing to work with exotic scripts; it is noted that one needs to download a special version to work with Khmer in some of my search results.

This is what comes of designing Unicode so that it is not tied to glyphs - and expecting the most sophisticated software support for the languages which are much less widely used than Arabic, languages like Khmer, Malayalam, Thai, and Burmese.

Microsoft releases the internals of usp10.dll to developers under an NDA, but it isn't updating it itself to widen its language support. It's a pity that Microsoft probably wouldn't be amenable to a project to write, using no Microsoft code, an OpenUSP, that not only included the features you use for Arabic, but the extra features many other world languages require - and which Microsoft itself does not have the resources to support.

It would be somewhat ironic for part of Windows to be based on open-source software - although nothing new, as it does, as the world learned some time back, use chunks of BSD Unix.

quadibloc

quadibloc

Posted
Posted

Further to these comments: Apparently, installing Microsoft Word causes usp10.dll to be installed in the Microsoft Word directory, for that application only. Normally, at least in some versions of Windows, usp10.dll is not part of Windows itself, and, thus, it is not normally available to applications other than Microsoft Word.

quadibloc

quadibloc

Posted
Posted

Ah. I did not read all the posts carefully, and the statement that "a flying boat is used in place of the Microsoft bridge" is one that I would not have accurately interpreted without help.

Some of my search results had pointed out that usp10.dll is itself out of date. Given how it was distributed, one would think it was there to give Microsoft Word an advantage over its competition, so this puzzles me.

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