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Arabic Projects Ideas 2: Open Arabic Fonts

8 comments

If you build Arabic website you must be hit by the hard reality, Arabic web font options are really narrow, the only realistic choices are:

  • Tahoma: only good for small sizes.
  • Arabic Transparent
  • Traditional Arabic

My idea is to buy other quality Arabic fonts and ask browser/OS vendors to include them, we really need more choice to improve the quality of website productions, and add more creativity to our Arabic Internet.

The idea came after I read something from Jihad Alammar, and Web fonts now (how we’re doing with that)

If you have an ideas to improve the initial idea please comment.

Written by Rayed

May 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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8 Responses to 'Arabic Projects Ideas 2: Open Arabic Fonts'

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  1. فكرة أتوقع لابد منها في تطوير الخطوط
    :)
    شكراً أبو عبد الله

    Ayoob AlAli

    25 May 09 at 2:45 pm

  2. check KACST’s open source Arabic fonts:
    http://ceri.kacst.edu.sa/fonts.htm
    it’s been used now, and can be found in most of the packages repositories.

    Jerais

    28 May 09 at 2:45 am

  3. Thank you Jerais for the link.
    These font looks decent, but I still want the help of Typographist, Designers, and media companies to select the fonts, and fill the gaps of the font choices.

    Rayed

    29 May 09 at 11:57 am

  4. i may find ways to convince some designer to start work on that, as a start: what are the guidlines to build the “standard” font in order that vendors accept it? (i prefer the answer will be in a one-to-one meeting :) )..

    btw, i tried the above poste font on mac, it work perfect! thanks allot Jerais and thanks to KACST ppl..

    misfer

    1 Jun 09 at 7:13 am

  5. i came across this post which have some draft solution not as we want but at lease it is a solution

    http://dev.holooli.com/2009/02/06/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ae%d8%b7%d9%88%d8%b7-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a8%d9%8a%d8%a9/#more-745

    hany

    13 Jun 09 at 1:08 am

  6. Things are getting hot on the Arabic fonts front with typekit:”Now, most major browsers—including the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera—recognize a CSS rule known as @font-face. What that means, in brief, is that Web developers can now easily embed downloadable fonts in their pages. To see an example, load up Firefox 3.5 or Safari 4 and check out this site. You’ll see three new typefaces—Liza, Auto, and Dolly—used in the body text and headlines. If you don’t have one of those browsers, you can check out the screenshots below.

    The @font-face CSS rule in action (top) vs. a Web page without @font-face support (bottom). Click image to expand.The @font-face CSS rule in action (top) vs. a Web page without @font-face support (bottom)If you didn’t jump out of your chair and run around the block, you’re probably not that into typography. But trust me—that page is revolutionary. While certain browsers allowed font embedding before, there’s never been a standard implementation that worked across the entire Web. As a result, Web designers have always been restricted to using the few fonts that they know were already installed on most people’s computers. That’s why most pages reach for Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, and Times New Roman, the fonts that ship with the Windows or Mac operating systems. With @font-face, we’ll finally see custom fonts on the Web—fonts designed to convey a specific tone or emotion, to create distinctive publications or styles, just like in print. Joshua Darden, a type designer and professor at the Parsons School of Design, likens the change to the invention of color photography. The Web, he says, has long been stuck in black and white. “It’s going to be a real jump forward to finally see real fonts online.”

    samer

    24 Aug 09 at 9:50 am

  7. Thank you Samer for these information.
    But which site you are talking about I could see the link, could you resubmit it again.
    Although @font-face will open many new doors, it still not as easy and consistent as installed fonts, one issue I can think of is the download size of these fonts, quality fonts could exceed 2MB in size.

    Rayed

    24 Aug 09 at 10:03 am

  8. - Does Sifr work on arabic fonts, sifr is a tool used to embed fonts on websites.

    Bassam

    26 Aug 09 at 7:10 pm

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