Multiple spaces in one single font?

[arifkarim]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Hi, I am developing a nastaliq font, which requires two individual spaces: one for arabic script, other for latin. So questions is, how do I do it in ms volt? I have already tried substituting space -> arabic_space and placed it in ccmp. This solution works fine for MS products, but not for adobe cs5 me.
Any alternatives? Also tried kerning space, but that is not the good solution... :)

[Thomas Phinney]

Good question. I suspect that Adobe's layout engine is not doing substitutions on the space glyph. If that's the case, and you don't want to kern it, I'm not sure I have any other suggestions.

I will note that a more appropriate glyph name would be "space.arabic"; the glyph name "arabic_space" suggests that it is a ligature of the "arabic" glyph and the "space" glyph. There are some paths to PDF creation where this naming could cause problems for later text recovery.

Cheers,

T

[arifkarim]

Thank you sir!
Btw, if i do use kern, exactly where its table should be added? On latin script or arabic? My last tests shows that adding kern.space on latin script isnt recognized on microsoft products. However, adobe indesign is handling it fine.
Another option could be; not adding any latin glyphs in the font. But that might trigger many problems when applying underline, bold etc, later... :)

[arifkarim]

Any suggetions?

[Thomas Phinney]

Sorry, I don't know what works in Uniscribe and the MS apps. There are many things that ought to work in OpenType that are not fully supported in all environments, unfortunately.

Cheers,

T

[arifkarim]

Fortunately, I programmed alternate space using kern feature on latin script. And yes it works now on all platforms.