“The introduction of OpenType font handling technology in 1996 fostered significant improvements in processing and modeling complex scripts in digital media. However, there are still deficiencies in handling the Arabic script. Major issues currently involve justification and tatweel/kashida/extension treatments, differentiating anchors of dots and marks in certain programming situations, and a variety of problems relating to spacing between scripts, glyphs, or glyph runs, such as kerning of text segments in styles with extreme cascading cursive connections, and the complex kerning/collision avoidance required with Yeh Barri and similar letters with tails that overlap other letters. These problems and their solutions are affected by the various levels at which text is handled in a digital environment, from application to the operating system to the OpenType specification itself. The automatic justification and tatweel/kashida treatments, in particular, involve issues across all three levels and affect many Arabic OpenType fonts. In this presentation, automatic justification and application of cursive tatweel/kashida will be discussed in greater detail because they represent a frequent challenge and often cause breaking of text or result in unattractive text compositions. Aida Sakkal and Mamoun Sakkal will present their proposal for preventing the text shaping breakup problem by adding a “Kashida exclusion table” to the OpenType standard. Some examples of the presenters’ practical solutions will be shared by showing their different Arabic font design projects as well as work by other type designers.”
Deficiencies of Handling Arabic Script in OpenType (and Some Possible Solutions)
Aida Sakkal
Aida Sakkal works at Sakkal Design alongside Dr. Mamoun Sakkal as an authority in all font things technical. She specializes in developing and programming font systems that model the artistic tendencies of beautifully handwritten calligraphy. With a BS degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Sakkal’s other focus is on developing tools to aid and automate the font creation process. She has worked with OpenType since 2001 and is involved in the growth and advancement of the format and its application to Arabic fonts.
Mamoun Sakkal
"Mamoun Sakkal is a founder and principal of Sakkal Design in Bothell, Washington, USA. In addition to art, he has degrees in architecture from Syria and the United States and a PhD in Islamic art history from the University of Washington. Sakkal has lectured on Islamic art and geometry, Arabic calligraphy, and typography at universities and conferences in the United States, Canada, England, Dubai, Kuwait, Syria, and Uzbekistan.
Providing graphic design and communication solutions to national and international corporations, Sakkal’s agency has focused on Arabic calligraphy and typography since the 1990s and received multiple awards for calligraphy, graphics, and type design, including those from ADC, TDC, Granshan, and IRCICA in Istanbul, Turkey. Sakkal’s work has been published in typography and calligraphy books and annuals, including Communication Arts, Hroof Arabiya, Letter Arts Review, LogoLounge, and Yearbook of Type. He designed the corporate Arabic typefaces for Burj Khalifa and Armani Hotel in Dubai. Other clients include Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Monotype.
Sakkal’s firm has served as the Arabic language expert for Microsoft for the past twenty years, and his Arabic typefaces are widely used as system fonts. He works with his daughter Aida Sakkal, who has been responsible for the programming of his typefaces since 2001. "