X Series 2

از IRMUG
نسخهٔ تاریخ ‏۲۱ مارس ۲۰۰۸، ساعت ۱۹:۴۳ توسط Behnam (بحث)

پرش به: ناوبری، جستجو
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X Series 2 fonts are built based on freely available fonts and they are 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 of "X Series fonts" (Which is now called "X Series 1") to be used on 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 have all a single X prefix on their names.

In this major upgrade, the support for languages mentionned above is added to the fonts and also the technology of OpenType is added in order to enable them to be used in Windows and Linux platforms as well. In addition, kerning has been added to improve the text presentation of Arabic script. With the introduction of Mac OS 5 (Leopard) by Apple, and a complete support of OpenType technology by Apple on this operating system, the incompatibility of fonts on different platforms is greately reduced but the extensive language support of X Series 2 fonts and its compatibility with older Mac platform remains a valuble advantage of this Series. Because of major differences between this Series and X Series 1, the fonts are not identified the same way and the fonts of the new Series have a two letter prefix, XB-XM and XP which put each font face in one of three general categories of 'Book', Magazine', and 'Pamphlet'. But 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?

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

This is how Tahoma, Arial and Times New Roman have become the fonts most used in the web for Arabic script although none of these fonts is an Arabic font. For example, although the Arabic characters in Arial and Times NR are identical, the line spacing of Arabic text produced by them is different. This difference is not because of differnt aesthetic needs of the two, which are identical in Arabic, but because of different aesthetic needs of the two fonts, in their Roman text reproduction, for which they are fundamentally made.

The challenge of a font containing both Arabic and Roman script is in line spacing and 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 Arabic script part. That's why harmonic magnification in Arial and Times NR is sacrificed to maintain proper line spacing for Roman characters. And Arabic characters are 'squeezed' in a way to 'fit' within that line spacing. This makes for visually smaller Arabic text for a given font size but it will maintain the proportion and the aesthetics of Arabic characters with respect of the Arabic text itself.

Tahoma on the other hand, has a different approch to this Roman-Arabic incompatibility. In order to maintain the visual harmony and magnification between Roman and Arabic characters, Tahoma has 'redesigned' the Arabic characters in order to have a harminic magnification with its Roman counterparts. This means that 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 means a serious sacrifice in Arabic script aesthetics for a better visibility.

In Macintosh, the system font for Arabic support is Geeza Pro which is an excellent font. But it is not emune to this general web requrements for Arabic-Roman mix dilemma. Geeza Pro does not have any Roman character in itself and it is used as a 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 a font that does have Roman characters but it is optimized for Arabic text. This means that there is a harmony and proportion between the magnification of Roman and Arabic characters but the line spacing is optimized for the Arabic part. 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 its Arabic text. One could say that a font from X Series 2 is not suitable for a Roman only text, the same way that 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 the characters from line above or below. Although the chance of occuring such cases is minimal, but it may happen. Since vowels and accents are not used in general practice, and they are mostly used on a word processor, it is recommanded to 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

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