Vide infra.
 --
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...



________________________________

From: Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 4:32:57 AM
Subject: Re: World's last handwritten newspaper


Lots of examples of ordinary (i.e. messy) handwriting; unfortunately the
transcriptions into print use an especially ugly typewriter (or computer?)
naskh-derived font.

For other calligraphic handwriting (particularly Arabic, rather than
Perso-spheric), please refer to:

<http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Arabic-Practical-Introduction-Script/dp/0198151500/>


{The Review comments at Amazon are worth a look, as well. --nb}

Yes, this has been the standard reference for half a century. Our Arabic T.A. in
1974, who was Egyptian, noted that Westerners write funny because they learned
it from a book (i.e. naskh) and tried to get us to use ruq`a, but the way he
used the chalk on the blackboard, as if it were a broad-edge pen, and very
slowly with great pressure, made it look quite unfeasible.
 
BTW the price they're asking is obscene.

Both <nasta`liq> and <ruq`ah> styles of Perso-Arabic have decent fonts
available:

<nasta`liq>: c.f.
<http://www.crulp.org/software/localization/Fonts/nafeesNastaleeq.html>
{There are several pages of interest at CRULP. --nb}

<ruq`ah>: googling for "font ruqah" will pull up a number of links...

Please also note that modern typsetting for Arabic script in a number of
different languages has made extremely great advances and one of the best
typesetting software available can be found at: http://www.decotype.com/,

When including links in email, don't type punctuation after them without a
space.

where the Tasmeem product line has been developed to not only account for
calligraphic styles of Persian and Arabic, but also allows for
geolocal-specific stylistics and the capability for individual adjustments
as felt to be necessary.

WRT Indic fonting, it is not only Malayalam that has traditionally had
'stacking' consonants, but also other Dravidian (southern) scripts, as
well as Hindi. With the advances made in typographical technology and the
advent of Open Type Fonts, more fonts are available that accommodate
traditional forms of typesetting/writing.

regards,
-Patrick Chew
  Patrick Chew was most helpful in offering his expertise on the topic. I
followed links from those he gave, and, indeed, have concluded that even
Urdu can be typeset quite well. I asked permission to forward the message
he sent me, and he graciously granted it. Here it is; unfortunately, Opera
mail failed to create links when I copied his message:

Mr. Bodley:

With regards to specimens of <nasta`liq>, please refer to:

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Nastaliq-Persian-Hands-Present/dp/1568592132/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]