>From: Basel Abu Khiran [mailto:bkh@itgsolutions.com]
>
>Dear Sir.....
>I would like to inquire aboout a certaain issue....
>I have a font that I use to desplay Qura'n
>You know that arabic letters have special characters above or below
>them....... now........after defining unicode in a c program..... the
>lenth of a word in that font is much more than it's actual length....
>
>How does a font handle these special characters????
It depends on the font format and the platform. Windows 2000 (and apps on
other versions of Windows that make use of the MS Unicode Script Processor
(Uniscribe)) supports glyph substitution and positioning lookups contained
in OpenType format Arabic fonts. For more information on the OpenType
format see the spec (v1.3) at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/default.htm>
The MS Arabic OT development spec is at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OTSPEC/arabicot/summ.htm>
For a general overview of Windows text processing using Uniscribe and
OpenType, see my article at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/opentype/default.htm>
More detailed information on Uniscribe, including a list of Uniscribe APIs,
is at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/uniscribe/default.htm>
OpenType GSUB and GPOS tables can be added to Arabic fonts using MS's
Visual OpenType Layout Tool (VOLT):
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/volt/default.htm>
Links to all these documents, and to other OpenType/TrueType related
developer tools and information are at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/creators.htm>
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
There are sheep in the field. 'I know what they are,' she says,
'but I don't know what they are called.' Thus Wittgenstein is
routed by my mother. (Alan Bennett, Diaries 1983)
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