From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2008 - 18:37:30 CDT
Behnam wrote:
> There
> is more tolerance about Arabic Kaf but the proper shape is Keheh.
The origin of these letter shape preferences is to be found in script
style preferences. The Persian and Urdu shape preferences are nastaliq
shapes, and the proper distinction is not between Arabic K and Persian
K, which is a typographic accident arising from misunderstanding and
technological limitations, but between naskh and nastaliq shapes. This
is most easily demonstrated by the fact that Arabic written in nastaliq
uses these same 'Persian' shapes. In modern Arabic script typography,
these misunderstood script style distinctions find their way, via
Unicode and codepages, into every new typeface, regardless of style. So
we have 'neo-naskh' typefaces containing bastardised nastaliq letters
for Persian and Urdu; perhaps we will eventually see 'neo-nastaliq'
fonts containing bastardised naskh letters for Arabic.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Gulf Islands, BC tiro@tiro.com I should be very surprised if any of those who are daily trying to imitate hand-cut type by mechanical means would be prepared to accept, say, a frying pan with so-called hammer marks if the hammer marks came out of a mould and the pan were forced on some machine. -- Jan van Krimpen
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