X Series 2: تفاوت بین نسخه‌ها

X Series 2 fonts are built on freely available fonts and extended to support Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Dari, Uzbek, Kurdish, Uighur, old Turkish (Ottoman) and modern Turkish (Roman).

These fonts are equipped with two font technologies, AAT and OpenType and can be used on any platform, Mac, Windows or Linux.

A short story of X Series fonts

Most of these fonts were first produced under the name "X Series fonts" (which is now called "X Series 1") and were intended to be used on a Macintosh platform. They were only equipped with AAT (Apple Advanced Typography) font technology and could not be used on Windows and Linux. X Series 1 fonts all have a single X prefix on their names.

In this major upgrade, support for the abovementioned languages has been added to the fonts. The technology of OpenType has also been added in order to enable their use in Windows and Linux platforms as well. In addition, kerning has been added to improve the presentation of the text in the Arabic script. With the introduction of Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) by Apple and, subsequently, the complete support of OpenType technology by Apple on this operating system, the incompatibility of fonts on different platforms has been greately reduced. Nevertheless, extensive language support of X Series 2 fonts and its compatibility with older Mac platform remains a distinct advantage of this Series. Because of the major differences between this Series and X Series 1, the fonts are not identified the same way. The fonts of the new Series have a two letter prefix, XB-XM and XP. The corresponding prefixes situate the font faces in one of three general categories: 'Book', Magazine', and 'Pamphlet'. However, as long as the font has a two letter prefix, it has the same language support and font technology as any font of X Series 2.

What is different about these fonts from Apple and MS fonts?

Any Arabic script font for the web must also have Roman characters in order to be responsive to the many cases of Roman text (web addresses, links, titles etc.) It is also useful when browsing the internet because of the range of languages it can support and the extent to which it can reproduce text on different web pages. The challenge of Arabic script font in this context is to maintain certain harmony between the two fundamentally different scripts.

As a result of this challenge, Tahoma, Arial, and Times New Roman have become the most popular fonts for viewing Arabic script on the web,even thhough none of these fonts is explicitly an Arabic font. For example, although the Arabic characters in Arial and Times NR are identical, they produce different line spacing when used in Arabic text. This difference is not the result of differnt aesthetic needs by the two Arabic scripts, which are identical, but rather the result of different aesthetic needs of the two fonts in their Roman text reproduction, which represents their intended purpose.

Thus, the challenge of a font containing both Arabic and Roman script rests in line spacing and the visual harmony between two scripts. If a font is fundamentally made for Roman script, it will set the line spaceing most suitable for the Roman font face it contains. But this line spacing is incompatible with harmonic magnification of the Arabic script part. Consequently, harmonic magnification in Arial and Times NR is sacrificed to maintain proper line spacing for Roman characters. And Arabic characters are made smaller in order to adjust to that line spacing. The result is a visually smaller Arabic text for its given font size that will, however, maintain the proportion and the aesthetics of Arabic characters with respect to the Arabic text itself.

Tahoma, on the other hand, produces a different effect in Roman-Arabic incompatibility. In order to maintain the visual harmony in magnification between Roman and Arabic characters, Tahoma has 'redesigned' the Arabic characters. Reasonably, then, the characters should be redesigned in a way to fit in a tight line spacing (optimal for its Roman characters) while maintainig a proper magnification. This process requires a serious sacrifice in Arabic script aesthetics for the sake of visibility.

In Macintosh, the system font for Arabic support is Geeza Pro, which is an excellent font but not immune to the dilemma presented by the general web requrements for Arabic-Roman usage. Geeza Pro does not have any Roman character in and of itself and is simply used to supplement to Apple Roman fonts in use for presenting the Arabic script texts in a web-page, and its line spacing is dependent to the Roman font for which it is being supplemented. Geeza Pro in web viewing has no control over line spacing of the text.

An Arabic script font suitable for web is, therefore, a font that contains Roman characters but it is optimized for Arabic text, resulting in a harmony and proportion between the magnification of Roman and Arabic characters but with the line spacing optimized for the Arabic component. This line spacing may be a bit too much for a Roman only text but since the font is fundamentally designed for Arabic use, the Roman text within an Arabic content will apear proportionate and in harmony with the Arabic text. One could say that a font from X Series 2 is not suitable for a Roman only text, the same way that Tahoma, Arial and Times NR are not suitable for an Arabic only text.

X Series 2 fonts are designed with web use in mind, so the line spacing is optimized for Arabic script in general use. The positionning of vowels and accents on the characters require more line spacing than what is set on these fonts to avoid superposing these vowels and accents on characters from the line above or below. Although the chance of such cases occuring is minimal, they may happen. Since vowels and accents are not used in general practice, and they are mostly used on a word processor, it is recommanded that one manually adjust the line spacing on a word processor when the vowels and accent are used extensively.

Use of X Series 2 fonts with Intel Mac

To use these fonts on Mac with Intel processor, you need Mac OS 10.4.9 or higher.

Download fonts

XB Zar, to download click here.

XB Niloofar, to download click here.

XB Khoramshahr, to download click here.

XB Kayhan, to download click here.

XB Yagut, to download click here.

XB Riyaz, to download click here.

XB Roya, to download click here.

XB Shafigh , to download click here.

XB Shafigh Kurd , to download click here.

XB Shafigh Uzbek , to download click here.

XB Shiraz, to download click here.

XB Sols to download click here.

XB Tabriz, to download click here.

XB Titre, to download click here.

XM Traffic, to download click here.

XM Vahid, to download click here.

XP Vosta, to download click here.

XM Yermook, to download click here.

XB Yas, to download click here.

XP Ziba, to download click here.

Support this project

To successfully improve the quality of web viewing for Arabs, Persians, Afghanis, Pakistanis and Kurds, it is crucial to promote the installation of these fonts by users. We have prepared some banners to be posted on different forums and websites to that goal.

You can download these banners here.