Arabic Kerning

[zairo]

1. I do Arabic kerning but it is not working when I tested in Linux Textmaker and LibreOffice. In Type 3.2, it looks great when I do kerning and save for both .gfs and .ttf. I am not testing in Windows 8 due to cannot delete the font.

    

2. Please check the label that for Unicode FEF3 is Ya Initial and FEF4 is Ya medial. For FEF1 is Ya isolated and FEF2 is Ya Final are already correct.

Please help me. Thanks in advance.

[Allan Murray]

Can you send me your font (to [e-mail]) so that I can have a look at it?

[zairo]

Okay I already send the font as per requested. Please check the email

[Allan Murray]

I have had an initial look at your font:
- I have examined the font and it contains the correct standard kerning and OpenType kerning tables.
- I tried your font in PagePlus 7 (Windows) and the kerning is functioning correctly there,
(left characters with kerning off, right with kerning on):



I will attempt to test it on some other applications and get back to you.

[Allan Murray]

I have tried this in LibreOffice (Windows version) and have found that the kerning does not work for your font, as you experienced, but does work if the same glyphs are mapped to Latin characters (eg A and B). I believe that it is because LibreOffice recognises these as Arabic characters and is treating it as a right-to-left font (I notice that the cursor movements across these characters jumps to RTL).

I suggest that you seek some advice from other type designers familiar with the issues involved in creating Arabic fonts (try the typophile.com forum). Type 3.2 font editor is certainly outputting a font with the kerning you have told it to, but because of the way that some applications will handle the font, I am not sure that this is what you should be doing for an Arabic font.