Arabic Script Unicode Fonts
for OpenType™ and AAT systems

Bob Hallissy, Jonathan Kew, 2007-06-22; 257458 reads

Updated 2008-12-11

Both ScheherazadeRegOT and LateefRegOT fonts are now available under the SIL Open Font License.

    Overview
        Character repertoire
        Language specific features
        Advanced features
    Software requirements
        Basic rendering
        Advanced features
    Downloads

Overview

Scheherazade and Lateef are extended Arabic script fonts designed by SIL International for modern Unicode-based systems using either OpenType or AAT (Apple Advanced Typography) for complex-script rendering. They support virtually all of the Unicode 4.1 Arabic character repertoire (excluding the Arabic Presentation Forms blocks, which are not recommended for normal use). Each typeface is currently available in Regular weight only.

Note

An experimental version of Scheherazade using SIL's Graphite rendering technology is available on the Graphite fonts page.

Scheherazade, named after the heroine of the classic Arabian Nights tale, is designed in a similar style to traditional typefaces such as Monotype Naskh, extended to cover the full Unicode Arabic repertoire.

Lateef is named after Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai, the famous Sindhi mystic and poet. It is intended to be an appropriate style for use in Sindhi and other languages of the South Asian rName'>ARABIC SIGN SAFHA)

These Arabic characters are intended to enclose or hold one or more digits. Uniscribe-based applications are likely to display these properly. Other applications may require the following hack: precede the entire sequence (subtending mark plus following digits) with either U+202D LEFT-TO-RIGHT OVERRIDE or U+202E RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE and follow the entire sequence with U+202C POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING. Exactly which of these hacks might work depends on your application. (For typesetting with XeTeX, this can be automated using the “font mapping” feature to insert the directional controls needed.)

Additionally, Scheherazade includes two simplified alternates for U+06DD ARABIC END OF AYAH under the Stylistic Alternates (salt) feature, but at this time we know of no OpenType-based applications that can access these.

These characters, including the alternate U+06DD ARABIC END OF AYAH forms in Scheherazade, are also supported in the AAT versions of the fonts. However, at least in version 10.3 of Mac OS X, the Cocoa text system does not render them correctly, and so they will only work properly in applications such as WorldText or XeTeX that use ATSUI directly, not through the Cocoa text framework.

Downloads

Visit the Arabic Script Unicode Fonts — Downloads page for license details and downloadable packages.

1	Inclusion of basic Latin repertoire is provided as a convenience, e.g., for use in menus or for displaying markup in text files; these fonts are not intended for extensive Latin script use.
2	For details see the Overview section of OpenType Layout Common Table Formats.

Arabic Script Unicode Fonts for OpenType™ and AAT systems

Overview

Downloads

Arabic Script Unicode Fonts
for OpenType™ and AAT systems