Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

>
> * Marco Cimarosti
> |
> | - In calligraphic Arabic, some letters go below the preceding
> | letter, rather than on its side. If many such "descending letter"
> | follow each other in a word, the height of the line of text
> | containing that word must be increased accordingly. But this
> | characteristic is not easily reproduced in typography so, in modern
> | printed texts, all letters follow each other horizontally.
>
> Does Nashtaliq have this characteristic? From what I've seen of it it
> seems to, but there could be other reasons as well.
>
> And is it true that Nashtaliq writing is still drawn by hand in
> Pakistani newspapers?

nasta'liq

Two different characteristics here: some ligatures are stacked rather
than horizontal; but the writing line itself slopes down for each phrase
(or long word).
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...