Advancing Arabic Fonts and the Ideal UI for Arabic Typography

Advancing Arabic Fonts and the Ideal UI for Arabic Typography
29LT - 12/9/2025 6:50:00 AM - GMT (+2 )

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The article you’re reading is a continuation of an ATypI talk I gave in Copenhagen in 2025. You can watch the talk before reading the article, or vice versa. Either way, it complements the article and makes the idea clear and complete.

What is the fastest and best way to produce Arabic type? Centuries of calligraphy have led to challenging Arabic printing, a constant struggle between the demands of the script and the advance of technology. Unicode, OpenType, and variable font technology are increasingly supporting diverse global scripts. This has significant implications for Arabic typography. This article and the AtypI talk take a moment to reflect on this.

The Script Uncovered

Each Arabic letter exists in numerous variations. Its fundamental form encompasses its basic alternates, contingent upon the letter’s position within the word: initial, medial, final, or isolated. Contextual alternates are also part of the system, allowing for changes based on the preceding or succeeding letters. Each word rests on a slant or a flat baseline; certain letter combinations ascend or descend gradually, creating a cascading arrangement of letters. Diacritic dots and accents can be positioned above or below the basic letterforms. Some glyphs are extended with a swash form or the addition of a kashida (tatwīl), which justifies the lines of text, etc.

Arabic calligraphy, a fluid and flexible script, is characterized by its intricate writing techniques and complex script grammar. Arabic typography, in turn, is evolving to capture this beautiful complexity through advancements in type technology.

Navigating the Historical Challenges in the Development of Arabic Fonts

Early Arabic calligraphers knew what to write. Deep inside them was the eternal question – how to do it best? So daily they answered this with decisions. And this question has echoed through the centuries of print technology.

Back in the Ottoman Empire, Naskh was an everyday calligraphic style, and is now the most widely used and extensively produced Arabic font. Throughout the Arab nations, Europe, and the USA, companies have risen to this challenge: how to produce and incorporate the Arabic rich and complex script grammar into developing technology which is initially designed primarily for Latin type.

Diagram of the nominal configuration of sorts for vocalized text setting. The King Fūād Qurʾān.
Government Press Face (Būlāq Type) 1920s

From the sixteenth century onwards, Arabic printing presses in the Middle East began to face the challenge of producing accurate Arabic lead type for printing. Let’s explore some notable examples to illustrate the evolution of this process, and then take a glimpse into the future. In 1890, the number of Arabic glyphs surged to such an extent that approximately 600 slots were required in the printer’s type case, roughly three to four times more than the number of slots needed for an English typeface. Over the following seventy years, printers grappled with the script and tamed it to a mere 100 glyphs, by removing ligatures (characters with two or more joined letters) and simply reducing the number of usable letters. Arabic keyboards from an 1890s Monarch typewriter and 1950s continental typewriter had a mere 80 glyphs. This was achieved by merging the initial and medial glyphs into one, and the final and isolated glyphs into one. Mechanical typesetting in the 50s and 60s continued on the simplification of the script, as in the Mrowa-Linotype font, for example. Since printing technology was initially conceived for the Latin script, this question always arose: how to simplify Arabic and make it compatible with the limitations of printing technology.

In the 1980s, as digital typography emerged, support started to improve, and the number of glyphs per font gradually increased with the advance of digital technology. An example of early digital fonts was Apple Macintosh Arabic, using 256 glyphs. When Unicode began charting glyphs in the early 90s, it charted 1,200 glyphs; however, only around 500 were Arabic glyphs, others being ligatures and extended language support for non-Arab languages. At the same time, DecoType worked around the limitations of the ASCII font technology and produced one Naskh typeface that complied with thirty ASCII fonts, adding up to around 2,800 glyphs. OpenType was the big actor, with its limitless number of glyphs. Now fonts could have any number of glyphs, but the technology of supporting complex script was still developing. Operating systems and applications, including those from Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Google, and other media companies, adopted the new OT font technology. In contrast, Arabic font designers and companies produced new fonts using the OT features provided and overcame the simplification trend that had been established for decades. In 2006, Taseem was released, a collaboration between DecoType, Winsoft, and Adobe. Taseem embedded the ACE (Arabic Calligraphy Engine) to compute and render the DecoType fonts. DT fonts came as close as possible to their Arabic calligraphic counterparts, aiming to render the Arabic script in the most calligraphic way possible. Glyphs were out – molecules were so old school. Enter their atoms – glyphlets. Thousands of combinations allowed Arabic complexity to emerge even more fully. This fabulous support developed through the 2010s, but it was limited to the DT font and available only within the Tasmeem add-on to Adobe InDesign. The technology was not open source, unlike OpenType.

29LT Idris Flat, Sakkal Kitab, Falak ACE, DecoType Naskh, and Bustani Fonts.

As OpenType has developed over the years, OT can now nearly draw level with DecoType technology. The number of glyphs in a typeface is now shrinking as the amount of coding intensifies. Instead of composing all the possible Arabic combinations (ligatures) and placing them in the font alongside the basic set, several contextual alternates can be defined for each letter, along with advanced OpenType feature code. This enables the layout engine to generate an infinite number of combinations for a given Arabic text. While contextual alternates are not yet comparable to the glyphlets found in DT fonts, they are heading in that direction.

Arabic typography still holds on tightly to its memories of calligraphy. So the whisper continues in typography’s ear: can print get closer and closer to calligraphy?

In my ATypI talk, I outlined the challenging aspects of Arabic typography, categorized into the following levels: Slanted or Flat Baseline, Base Forms, Basic Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Cascading Configuration, Diacritic Dots, Diacritic Accents, and final Justification using letters swashes or baseline extensions.

Contemporary Arabic fonts should strive to address all these aspects, if not more, and layout engines must analyze and compose these fonts in all their typographic possibilities. While past and present-day fonts cover a portion of these aspects, layout engines still need to advance to fully realize the potential of setting Arabic typography in all its intricate levels and layers.

Introducing an Ideal Arabic Typography UI

oin me in envisioning the future of Arabic fonts and typesetting applications, where Arabic typography reaches its full potential. What I propose here is an ideal UI (User Interface). For now, the tech is not yet advanced enough for this UI. But as it grows, the watchwords for the applications it produces are “user-friendly.” As good as possible for Arabic typographers. This is how it could work.

You can watch the ATypI talk starting from 15:15 in the recording, as it will best clarify the concept of the UI.

A set of five gleaming panels: 1) Typeface, 2) Diacritics, 3) Stylistic Sets, 4) Justification, and 5) Figures. (Panel 1) enables straightforward font modifications tailored to the requirements of the Arabic script. It includes a variable font axes section that allows for easy manipulation of the axes in a specific typeface, such as weight, width, contrast, extension, baseline thickness, and so on. (Panel 2) changes the color and shape of the dots (circles, squares, or diamonds), and the size, width, angle, and colour of the accents. If children, or academic or religious groups make up the readership, accents can be revealed or hidden as necessary. The big plus-point: all elements can change independently of the basic letters, simply by a click. (Panel 3) presents simply and clearly the stylistic sets of a typeface, allowing users to easily identify and activate or deactivate them. (Panel 4) guides the justification with alternates, swashes, and kashidas. Instead of solely relying on kashida placements, the justification should now encompass a balanced distribution of kashidas and swashes within a given text, ultimately leading to a more compelling justification text color. (Panel 5) shows the different forms for figures and numerals.

This is the technology I dream of seeing, a future we need. Type designers and layout engines working together closely. Talking to each other and listening to the possibilities. Dialogue leading to greater support for the Arabic script, and future applications built to cater for different global scripts, not primarily built for the Latin script.

STEPPING INTO THE NEW CHAPTER

Arabic ranks as the fourth most-spoken native language in the world, with 422 million native and multilingual speakers. Better tech answers are possible, and tech companies need to invest more. We aim always for the best decisions and the best support for the printed language. The Arabic script is striving towards a better form.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of typesetting applications and layout engines, it’s crucial to address the key points discussed in this article to ensure robust support for both existing and future fonts, as well as their accurate and future layout engines. While Adobe continues to advance its applications, new ones like Affinity and Figma are pioneering the typographic user experience from scratch. Present layout engines need to evolve, and new ones can be built potentially in a more efficient and innovative manner from scratch to cater to the intricate demands of global scripts, such as Arabic. Maybe a standard typography UI can be present for Latin and other scripts that relate to it, while specific other UI can be developed for specific world scripts, such as Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, etc.

After my talk at ATypI, the Adobe team approached me and asked me to consult on the Arabic typography behavior and interfaces in their Adobe apps. They were inspired by the UI I presented and wanted to know how they could enhance their own. I had already conducted constructive consultancy sessions with Adobe experts, and I anticipate seeing the implementation of the solutions and typographic behaviors we discussed. I also hope that other design app companies will take action and move forward to better support the Arabic script. For instance, Affinity was completely revamped after being acquired by Canva, and the new app is much more user-friendly and intelligent compared to the previous Affinity apps or its competitors. Unfortunately, they currently do not support the Arabic script and Left-to-Right scripts. This might be the ideal time to explore the needs of the Arabic script and build something intelligent and user-friendly from scratch. It might be easier to build something from scratch than to fix or edit old software.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abifarès, H. & Kortbawi, J. Imprimerie Catholique 1848–2000. (Khatt Books)

Nemeth, T. Arabic Typography: History and Practice. (Niggli Verlag)

Nemeth, T. Arabic Type-Making in the Machine Age. (Koninklijke Brill NV)

Özkal, Ö., & Yazicigil, O. Ottoman Typography towards Modernisation: Private Presses, Mass Media and a New Perception of Typographic Production. Researchgate.net

Sawaf, K. WD40. Towards Restoring Flexible Typographic Control Over Arabic Tashkeel Diacritics. PhD research, University of Edinburgh, UK.

INLIBRIS Gilhofer Nfg.

oztypewriter.

ARABIC FONTS mentioned in the ATypI Copenhagen 2025 talk and this article:

Boutros, M., & Boutros, A. Boutros International

Captan, L. Falak ACE. DecoType

Captan, L. Falak OTL. Ama Foundry