From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Tue Jun 14 2005 - 15:44:31 CDT
Chris Jacobs wrote:
> Are there examples in arabic where a letter of the three-letter root
> ligatures with a letter outside the root?
The important thing to remember is that much 'ligaturing' in Arabic is really a misnomer
or, at best, a merely technical description of a glyph processing model by which typeforms
are rendered. There are many different styles of written Arabic, and apart from the
lam_alif ligation -- and sometimes including even that -- most of the ways in which
letters connect to each other can by analysed not in terms of ligatures but contextual
adjustment of connecting lettershapes. It just so happens that most typesetting
technologies have handled the more complex of these connections by casting precomposed
combinations, i.e. ligatures. But it is perfectly possible to conceive of a typesetting
technology for Arabic that would not employ *any* ligatures, but would rely solely on
contextual substitution and cursive connection positioning of glyphs (including
sub-character glyphs representing different parts of a letter in a particular connecting
sequence).
Monotype recently used this kind of analysis when making the digital version of their
Nastaliq type. The old metal version had something like 20,000 ligatures (including many
complete word ligatures); the new digital version has a couple of hundred, if I recall
correctly, and all the other forms are made up from contextual connecting segments.
So it is really meaningless to ask whether a letter ligates with other letters in Arabic,
because the answer is dependent on the model employed in the font. One answer might be
that almost all Arabic letters ligate; another answer might be that almost none of them
ligate.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: Truth and tolerance, by Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger as was An autobiography from the Jesuit underground, by William Weston SJ War (revised edition), by Gwynne Dyer
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