Replacing PERCENT sign with ARABIC PERCENT sign

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: ghasemkiani
         

Hi everybody, and thanks for the great group.
I have a question and I will be very grateful if you could take the time and answer it. Can we use the 'locl' feature to replace the "percent" glyph with the "Arabic percent" glyph for the Persian (or Arabic) language in the Arabic script? Seemingly, this doesn’t work. Do you think we can make this work with the current versions of Uniscribe? What is the correct way to do this? Thank you in advance for your replies.

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: Dr_Hamed2
         

Salaam

 

I would suggest a slightly different, and perhaps more effective solution.

 

Assign the Arabic Percent sign to the relevant Keyboard key, i.e. redefine the keyboard.

To be more specific, re-assign the Percent key to the Arabic, rather than the Latin per-cent sign. If I recall correctly, they have different Unicode code points.

 

The Microsoft Keyboard Layout generator is available from Microsoft.

 

Best Regards

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: ghasemkiani
         

Thanks for the reply, but your suggestion may not be a satisfactory solution, because we need the conversion only in Arabic and Persian languages. In other words, when we type an English sentence, the "%" sign must be displayed as a proper PERCENT, but in Arabic and Persian sentences, it should be displayed with an ARABIC PERCENT sign ("Ùª"). (I am not sure if the keyboard layout solution fulfills this requirement.) I have used an easy solution until now: I have defined an autocorrect in Microsoft Word and the "%" characters automatically is converted to "Ùª" character in Persian-language text. The problem is I don't really like to use to code point for ARABIC PERCENT sign, because I think that both are semantically the same, only the displayed glyph should be different.

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: Majid
         
For this to be implemented the way you wish it to be implemented is quite an issue and is bound to bring out other issues as well.

This issue relates to text rendering and in order to work either of the following things have to happen:

1. Either Uniscribe and every other text rendering logic (on Unix as well as Apple/Mac, if we wish it to be standardized).

2. Or the OS and applications should support language/locale specific logic built into OpenType fonts. (Then too implementation would be limited to OT fonts.) This feature has been there and quite a few OT fonts provide the support too but there are'nt any applications supporting this feature so it is as good as redundant.

One of the issues that could rise is for example the one we face in Sindhi which has period and exclamation sign same as English/Latin. Many applications and browsers handle it properly but some browsers, when they come across these signs at end of a paragraph assume writing direction Left to Right and display it as such.

I hope you can find a way to resolve it on your own, I mean without getting adequate support at OS/applications level.

Regards,

-Majid Bhurgri
www.bhurgri.com

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: ghasemkiani
         

I understand that the 'locl' feature is used for some glyphs in Latin script that have different shapes in some languages, for example the "í" in Lithuanian, or the like. The same approach is used for the shape of extended Arabic digit four or seven in Urdu which is different from the Persian shapes of these two digits. So I would like to know if any arbitrary glyph substitution we define in 'locl' feature will be supported by Uniscribe or other rendering engines or is there some limitation on the substitutions we can define for this feature?
I would also like to refer to an important consideration in this regard. The shape of letters "yeh" and "kaf" in Arabic and Persian are slightly different. I think that instead of using the code points for "Persian yeh" and "Arabic keheh" characters, we'd better use the ordinary "yeh" and "kaf" characters and use the "locl" feature to produce the modified shapes in Persian. Of course, this situation might be slightly different for other languages like Pashto, where, e.g., "Arabic yeh" and "Persian yeh" both coexist and are semantically different.

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: Majid
         
What you suggest makes sense but as you can yourself see this might lead to confusion in languages such as Pashto, and may be some others as well. Also, this would call for modifications in Unicode, and unless adequate modifications are done, such an approach, deviating from a standard, would inevitably lead to confusion. There probably are no easy answers and various approaches have relative merits. Unicode too has not adopted a uniform policy here. Sometimes characters are distinguished and defined separately ("yeh" and "kaf" in Arabic and Persian as you point out) and sometimes these are left to be handled at the language specific tags at the font level. Unfortunately, language specific tags, though available in OpenType, have yet to be supported at applications level. Such support lacking, one is forced to modify the font to serve a language at the expense of it being unusable for another language.

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: baituraza
         
Hello Ghasemkiani

Your problem is pretty simple and can be solved by incorporating the scripts of both Arabic and English.

I mean when you set the language in font, set default lagunage as Arabic, and also include Latin script.


Thats all.

If you need help in setting the language in font file just check the volt documentation or drop an email for a quick cheatsheet.
Ali

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 2:02 AM, ghasemkiani <ghasemkiani@gmail.com> wrote:

	New Message on Microsoft VOLT users community

Replacing PERCENT sign with ARABIC PERCENT sign

Reply

Reply to Sender                     Recommend Message 3 in Discussion

From: ghasemkiani Thanks for the reply, but your suggestion may not be a satisfactory solution, because we need the conversion only in Arabic and Persian languages. In other words, when we type an English sentence, the "%" sign must be displayed as a proper PERCENT, but in Arabic and Persian sentences, it should be displayed with an ARABIC PERCENT sign ("%"). (I am not sure if the keyboard layout solution fulfills this requirement.) I have used an easy solution until now: I have defined an autocorrect in Microsoft Word and the "%" characters automatically is converted to "%" character in Persian-language text. The problem is I don't really like to use to code point for ARABIC PERCENT sign, because I think that both are semantically the same, only the displayed glyph should be different.

View other groups in this category.

To stop getting this e-mail, or change how often it arrives, go to your E-mail Settings.                             Need help? If you've forgotten your password, please go to Passport Member Services.                             For other questions or feedback, go to our Contact Us page.                             If you do not want to receive future e-mail from this MSN group, or if you received this message by mistake, please click the "Remove" link below. On the pre-addressed e-mail message that opens, simply click "Send". Your e-mail address will be deleted from this group's mailing list.           Remove my e-mail address from Microsoft VOLT users community.

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: ghasemkiani
         

Thanks for your useful reply. I agree mostly with what you have stated. Maybe this is not the right place to discuss the various ramifications of this subject, but I would like to explain what I have found out about this problem.
Even though there have been different approaches in Unicode in the past, but, as you surely know better than me, the current approach is to leave rendering functionality to rendering engines and to use character code points mainly for semantic differentiation of characters. For example, the early Arabic characters had code points for initial, medial, and final shapes, but the recent Arabic script characters do not have different code points for their various shapes (and the use of the previous code points is strongly discouraged). As for the standard, what you say is correct: the ISIRI 6219 standard clearly states that the Persian yeh and keheh should be used in Persian text, instead of Arabic yeh and kaf characters. But what is important is that this standard is not universally implemented in the Persian texts and websites. For example, the website of "Iran Book House" (ketab.ir), which is an important database of all books published in Iran, currently uses only Arabic yeh and kaf. On the other hand, adinebook.com, an important Persian online bookstore, uses Persian yeh and keheh! Until a few months ago, when you searched in Google for a Persian word (in Arabic script, naturally), you had to include both forms of kaf and yeh characters to obtain all search results. Fortunately, Google currently considers all forms and includes all of them in the search results. I have noticed that Google takes this same approach in Arabic for yeh and alef maksura, even though they are semantically different.
There are a lot of Persian web pages that use Arabic yeh and kaf letters. Furthermore, the usual way that the percent sign is written in Arabic and Persian texts is with the ordinary "%" character. So I think we need fonts that can render these characters properly.

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: ghasemkiani
         

Hello baituraza,

I tried the 'locl' feature, but it didn't wotk in Microsoft Word. I would like someone to check this or give me a definite answer if this is possible. I know it is easy to implement in a truetype font using VOLT. What I would like to know is if it is supported by applications like Word. And if not, exactly what substitutions are supported.

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: Chris Fynn
         
Dear ghasemkiani

Unicode encodes scripts. Since the Latin percent sign and Arabic percent
sign are in different scripts they are encoded as separate characters in
Unicode. Although the two characters may semantically be the same, they
are from different scripts so they were encoded separately.

This is different from the case of initial, medial, and final shapes of
Arabic letters - since the different forms of these letters are used in
one script.

The feature most appropriate to do what you want may be locl. However,
if that doesn't work, you could try using other features which allow
contextual substitution. (The context would be any Arabic Script Digit
occurring immediately after the percent sign.) However most OpenType
rendering engines, including Uniscribe, seem to work on a script by
script basis - so it may be that it is difficult to get the glyph for a
character in one script to get substituted when the context is glyphs
for characters in another script. (Characters like Percent and common
punctuation should probably be included in the coverage for all scripts.)

What happens in VOLT itself is not a  good guide since VOLT does not use
Uniscribe.

- Chris


> From: ghasemkiani
> Message 8 in Discussion
>
> Thanks for your useful reply. I agree mostly with what you have stated. Maybe this is not the right place to discuss the various ramifications of this subject, but I would like to explain what I have found out about this problem.
> Even though there have been different approaches in Unicode in the past, but, as you surely know better than me, the current approach is to leave rendering functionality to rendering engines and to use character code points mainly for semantic differentiation of characters. For example, the early Arabic characters had code points for initial, medial, and final shapes, but the recent Arabic script characters do not have different code points for their various shapes (and the use of the previous code points is strongly discouraged). As for the standard, what you say is correct: the ISIRI 6219 standard clearly states that the Persian yeh and keheh should be used in Persian text, instead of Arabic yeh and kaf characters. But what is important is that this standard is not universally implemented in the Persian texts and websites. For example, the website of "Iran Book House" (ketab.ir), which is an important database of all books published in Iran, currently uses only Arabic ye
h and kaf. On the other hand, adinebook.com, an important Persian online bookstore, uses Persian yeh and keheh! Until a few months ago, when you searched in Google for a Persian word (in Arabic script, naturally), you had to include both forms of kaf and yeh characters to obtain all search results. Fortunately, Google currently considers all forms and includes all of them in the search results. I have noticed that Google takes this same approach in Arabic for yeh and alef maksura, even though they are semantically different.
> There are a lot of Persian web pages that use Arabic yeh and kaf letters. Furthermore, the usual way that the percent sign is written in Arabic and Persian texts is with the ordinary "%" character. So I think we need fonts that can render these characters properly.
>
>

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: baituraza
         
Hello

Well I beleive you must be doing everythinng correct but just I suggest as below

Latin
Default
here you can give complete English or latin script with English percentage sign

Arabic
Default
Here you can give the Arabic percent sign

Now it all will depend upon your system language keyboard at the time of typing

When you are typing with Arabic keyboard, it will switch to arabic percecnt sign, and when you are typing with English keyboard in same font, it will write english with english standard percent sign.


Theoratically it MUST work this way.

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:03 PM, ghasemkiani <ghasemkiani@gmail.com> wrote:

	New Message on Microsoft VOLT users community

Replacing PERCENT sign with ARABIC PERCENT sign

Reply	Reply to Sender                     Recommend Message 9 in Discussion
From: ghasemkiani Hello baituraza, I tried the 'locl' feature, but it didn't wotk in Microsoft Word. I would like someone to check this or give me a definite answer if this is possible. I know it is easy to implement in a truetype font using VOLT. What I would like to know is if it is supported by applications like Word. And if not, exactly what substitutions are supported.

View other groups in this category.

To stop getting this e-mail, or change how often it arrives, go to your E-mail Settings.                             Need help? If you've forgotten your password, please go to Passport Member Services.                             For other questions or feedback, go to our Contact Us page.                             If you do not want to receive future e-mail from this MSN group, or if you received this message by mistake, please click the "Remove" link below. On the pre-addressed e-mail message that opens, simply click "Send". Your e-mail address will be deleted from this group's mailing list.           Remove my e-mail address from Microsoft VOLT users community.

[Tags:]

Jump to: Please select a destination: ----------------------------- News and announcements ----------------------------- => Announcements from the forum’s moderators => News from the font industry ----------------------------- Type design and font technology ----------------------------- => Principles of type design => OpenType Layout feature development => Hinting => Font Formats and OpenType => Web font embedding => Font licensing ===> Electronic EULA Abstract (EEULAA) ----------------------------- Education and collaboration ----------------------------- => Work: Offers => Work: Looking for => Education: Offers => Education: Looking for => Typographic Events and Conferences ----------------------------- FontLab products ----------------------------- => News from FontLab => FontLab Studio ===> FontLab Studio Problems ===> FontLab Studio Tips and Tricks ===> FontLab Studio Wish List ===> FontLab Studio Public Preview => Fontographer ===> Fontographer Problems ===> Fontographer Wish List => TypeTool => AsiaFont Studio => TransType => ScanFont => SigMaker => Other Products ----------------------------- Photofont products ----------------------------- => BitFonter => Photofont WebReady => Photofont Start => Photofont ID => Photofont QX => The Photofont technology ----------------------------- Adobe Type products ----------------------------- => Adobe FDK for OpenType (AFDKO) ----------------------------- Apple Font products ----------------------------- => Apple Font Tools ----------------------------- Microsoft Typography products ----------------------------- => Microsoft Font Validator => Microsoft Visual OpenType Layout Tool (VOLT) => Microsoft Web Embedding Fonts Tool (WEFT) => Microsoft Visual TrueType (VTT) ----------------------------- Other products and Python scripting ----------------------------- => Python scripting => FontTools/TTX => Other font-related tools ----------------------------- Special interest groups ----------------------------- => SBL Fonts ===> SBL Hebrew ===> SBL Greek ===> SBL BibLit ----------------------------- FAQ and TechNotes ----------------------------- => OpenType Layout feature development FAQ and TechNotes => Hinting FAQ and TechNotes => Font Formats and OpenType FAQ and TechNotes => Web font embedding FAQ and TechNotes => Font licensing FAQ and TechNotes => FontLab Studio FAQ and TechNotes => Fontographer FAQ and TechNotes => TypeTool FAQ and TechNotes => AsiaFont Studio FAQ and TechNotes => TransType FAQ and TechNotes => ScanFont FAQ and TechNotes => SigMaker FAQ and TechNotes => BitFonter FAQ and TechNotes => Photofont WebReady FAQ and TechNotes => Photofont Start FAQ and TechNotes => Photofont ID FAQ and TechNotes => Photofont QX FAQ and TechNotes ----------------------------- Archive (MSN Groups) ----------------------------- => Archive: Old FontLab forum ===> Archive: FontLab Tips and Tricks ===> Archive: FontLab Bugs and Problems ===> Archive: FontLab Wish List ===> Archive: FontLab Announcements => Archive: Old Microsoft Font Validator group => Archive: Old Microsoft VOLT group => Archive: Old Microsoft VTT group ===> Archive: VTT Downloads ===> Archive: VTT Support ===> Archive: VTT Suggestions => Archive: Old Microsoft WEFT group ===> Archive: WEFT III ===> Archive: EOT for Email => Archive: Old SBL Fonts group ===> Archive: SBL Hebrew ===> Archive: SBL Greek ----------------------------- Various ----------------------------- => fontlab.com — the FontLab website => forum.fontlab.com — this forum => Other Topics