In bug 113532, LibreOffice started to bundle Arabic fonts. This is good, but - quoting comment 24 on bug 113532: > Now that the bundled arabic fonts are finished, we can ... look > at what should be the default font used in writer for headings > and body text, and what should be the default font used in calc >, impress, and draw. That was said 5, yes that's five, years ago... and still hasn't happened! It must be done yesterday.
Created attachment 181870 [details] Options for the default sans font in Calc > Yousuf Philips (jay) wrote: > > In the attachment, we have a selection of fonts that can be used > as the default font for Calc, Impress and Draw. I had chosen Noto > Naskh Arabic previously but then Noto Sans Arabic was released in > October and feel that is the better font, as it is a Sans font > that looks similar to both our current default Tahoma and the > fallback DejaVu Sans.
Created attachment 181871 [details] body & header font combination options for Writer > Yousuf Philips (jay) wrote: > > In writer, we have to select which font to use for headings and which one > for text body. In English and Hebrew, they default to a Sans font for > headings and a serif font for text body, which does make it easier to > identify. I'm thinking that going with Noto Naskh or Noto Kufi for headings > and Amiri, KacstBook or KacstOffice for text body.
We use Noto Nastaliq Urdu by default for CTL (v7.3). What exactly do you expect? Maybe Hossein wants to look into the issue.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3) > We use Noto Nastaliq Urdu by default for CTL (v7.3). What exactly do you > expect? I expect for us to complete the process that Yousuf started back in 2017: I expect people who author Arabic documents regularly to consider the different combinations in the attachments, and chime in on which is the better choice for the defaults (in Writer and in other apps). Now, it's possible that the result of user feedback would be that the current choices are fine - but that would be based on actual (power) user feedback. I don't use Arabic enough to feel qualified to make that choice.
Created attachment 182357 [details] New and old version
Created attachment 182360 [details] New and old version Reproduced Step:1 Open Oldversion 7.3.2.2 and New version 7.4.0.0 of Libre office Step:2 In Arabic Text zoom 100% You can see that there will be gap in the text Environment Libre Office linuax mint 21
(In reply to Arun T from comment #6) Arun, can you be more explicit about how your attachments relate to the bug subject?
I am a native Arabic speaker. From the provided "Options for the default sans font in Calc", I think "Noto Naskh Arabic UI" looks the best. And from "body & header font combination options for Writer", The second option "Noto Naskh Arabic (Heading) / KacstBook (Text Body)" looks the best. However, it does have some shape mistakes. For example, "U+0651 : ARABIC SHADDA" in the word "كتيّب" made the word be disconnected. And "U+064B : ARABIC FATHATAN" in "مستخدماً" is very high that it intersects with the word above it. "Noto Naskh Arabic" Seems good for body font also.
can we use "Arial" font? (I think we cannot due to licensing, but I wanted to make sure)
Comment on attachment 182360 [details] New and old version Doesn't seem related to default font selection.
Comment on attachment 182357 [details] New and old version Doesn't seem related to default font selection.
(In reply to Waleed Mortaja from comment #8) Hello Waleed. First, thanks for your input. It's important for native speakers to chime in on this, and unfortunately - few Arabic speakers are currently Active (e.g. on the Telegram channel). Anyway, about the _second_ issue you mentioned with KasctBook: I just filed bug 152358 about this. About the _first_ issue - Khaaled Khosni has the most experience with these issues, and I hope he can chime in. I'm adding him to the CC list - Khaled, maybe you can also share your stylistic preference regarding the default fonts. The way I see it, once we get at least, say, five people, who are either native speakers or write Arabi daily, making recommendations - that should be enough to make a choice. Then, later on, if we somehow get strong feedback against our choice, we can always reconsider. How does that sound to everyone?
Hi Eyal I'm not familiar with how this process works. Should we just mention any font we like or there are some criteria like being open source? What about distinction between different languages like Arabic and Farsi?
I have no opinion here as I believe fobt choices are both personal taste/regional taste and related the the kind of text being set. As for Kacst fonts, I suggest dropping these fonts altogether and not using them for anything, they are orphaned fonts with no upstream and have a shady legal status (KACST knows nothing about them and I had no luck finding anyone who knows anything about them, and some of the fonts are clearly clones of other non-free fonts, not just metric compatible but direct clones and probably ripoffs).
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #12) > unfortunately - few Arabic speakers are currently Active (e.g. > on the Telegram channel). Unfortunately, The number of Arabic users of libreoffice is not very high to begin with, at least in my environment. Can you provide me with links for the libreoffice Arabic communities? > The way I see it, once we get at least, say, five people, who are either > native speakers or write Arabi daily, making recommendations - that should > be enough to make a choice. Then, later on, if we somehow get strong > feedback against our choice, we can always reconsider. How does that sound > to everyone? Sounds very good. I am trying to find some friends willing to help in this. I am with گیلان question: Eyal, Are there restrictions on font selection?
https://t.me/+UHz-eKUtVb52P0Kr (In reply to گیلان from comment #13) > Hi Eyal > I'm not familiar with how this process works. Should we just mention any > font we like or there are some criteria like being open source? See below. > What about distinction between different languages like Arabic and Farsi? Hmm... I haven't thought about that. Do you believe there should be a distinction? I mean, if Farsi-writers say they prefer a different default, then sure, but - would they prefer a different default? (In reply to Waleed Mortaja from comment #15) > Unfortunately, The number of Arabic users of libreoffice is not very high to > begin with, at least in my environment. This is indeed a problem - and somewhat of a failure on the project's part. I spoke about this at the LibreOffice conference this year: https://events.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice-conference-2022/talk/YNNRCV/ > Can you provide me with links for the libreoffice Arabic communities? The Arabic + Farsi Telegram group: https://t.me/+UHz-eKUtVb52P0Kr The Arabic section of the Ask LO site: https://ask.libreoffice.org/c/arabic/ that's basically it. > Sounds very good. I am trying to find some friends willing to help in this. Great. But - please ask them to not just choose from the options in the PDF Yousuf had attached. We need more alternatives due to the problems with Kacst fonts which both you and Khaaled have brought up. > I am with گیلان question: Eyal, Are there restrictions on font selection? Well, let's see... * The font's legal status must be clear: Original creator or current official owner known, license known and recognized by original creator/current owner. * The font needs to have an appropriate license. The license must allow, at the very least, redistribution; but we may even be requiring the font license to allow modification. I'm not sure about that (I wasn't in charge of font adoption for the Hebrew fonts, Yousuf was). * The font needs to be available in at least two weights, regular and bold. * The font must be free of significant bugs such as misreported dimensions, glyphs with junk in them, etc. (So, not KacstBook...), or have a maintainer we can ask to fix the bugs before we adopt the font. * For the Writer body font, I _think_ we need to choose a serif font (for those who don't know what that is: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/serif-vs-sans-serif.html ). * Not a requirement, but it would be nice if the font matched well with its corresponding Latin font. So, for the Writer body font, something matching Liberation Serif. PS - I'm allowing myself to mark the bug as new.
I am a native Arabic speaker. in body & header font combination options for Writer , option "Noto Kufi Arabic (Heading) / Amiri (Text Body)" .
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #16) > Hmm... I haven't thought about that. Do you believe there should be a > distinction? I mean, if Farsi-writers say they prefer a different default, > then sure, but - would they prefer a different default? I believe there are generally different aesthetics tastes among Arabic and Farsi users. And of course, the choice of font also depends on the case of usage so let's assume it's a simple public-intended book or a formal letter. In that case a Farsi user opinion would probably be: Noto Naskh Arabic: acceptable. Noto Kufi Arabic: Not formal at all. Amiri and KacstOffice: totally Arabic KacstBook: acceptable For Farsi, I suggest IRTitr for header and IRLotus or IRNazanin for body. > * The font's legal status must be clear: Original creator or current > official owner known, license known and recognized by original > creator/current owner. > > * The font needs to have an appropriate license. The license must allow, at > the very least, redistribution; but we may even be requiring the font > license to allow modification. I'm not sure about that (I wasn't in charge > of font adoption for the Hebrew fonts, Yousuf was). These 3 are modified (not created from scratch) fonts from a government project in Iran to provide a free series of standard Farsi fonts for personal and commercial use. Both the government Institute and the private sector contractor are now disbanded and currently it is not possible to contact the umbrella state agency (http://majazi.ir) to ask about the license. Bytheway, Iran does not recognize international copyright so I reckon you can use them with no worries.
Salaam, another native Arabic user opinion on LibreOffice on Linux specifically. I very much appreciate all your efforts so don't take any disagreement as personal. First, I am strongly against adding fonts in LibreOffice or any application for people to use. LibO should only include a font which is essential for its internal working or templates if there is such a thing. Mostly, that's unnecessary and it's enough to use generic names like sans, serif, mono, .... Which fonts are installed and preferred by the user would be done on the OS-level through a font management application. This approach saves space, avoids duplication and conflicts, relieves the apps from updating fonts, allow personal fonts and system fonts, ... What fonts users choose as defaults for all their applications is not the business of each application either. It's the job of fontconfig in GNU/Linux to handle this. There are thousands of applications and if each of (libreoffice, inkscape, gimp, firefox, chromium, calibre ...) would include their selection of fonts and then ask their userbase to choose a default font for each and every language, it's a mess, and waste of time and resources. Why would a Japanese user has Arabic fonts in his system against his willing and vice versa. Currently I use LibO in ArchLinux which is wisely built using --without-fonts. I am not sure what's the current fallback mechanism. If it's hardcoded then this is a bug that should be fixed by using aliases. (In reply to خالد حسني from comment #14) > (KACST knows nothing about them and I had no luck finding > anyone who knows anything about them Actually, I know a lot about those fonts. I was working with KACST during that time. I know most of the people involved but this is 15 years ago! The fonts served a good purpose at that time and one of the first which are bundled with distros. Currently, the situation, the experience and the tools are much better so no need to waste time reviving them and I definitely agree with you to drop them, but also the rest. (In reply to Waleed Mortaja from comment #15) > Unfortunately, The number of Arabic users of libreoffice is not very high to > begin with, at least in my environment. Can you provide me with links for > the libreoffice Arabic communities? Because LibO still has some serious and annoying issues. When users choose a font explicitly, LibO ignores it (issue #62063), and we are discussing what to choose for the user ;) . Also, none of the fonts here are good enough for any serious publishing but that is another story. The point is we need to work on these issues before people would take it seriously. Someone should hire Khaled Hosney for a 1-year contract full time and he can fix them all inshallah ;)
(In reply to گیلان from comment #18) > I believe there are generally different aesthetics tastes among Arabic and > Farsi users. Ok, then that's settled! Different defaults. Still, I think we'll keep the discussion here rather than opening a separate bug. > And of course, the choice of font also depends on the case of > usage so let's assume it's a simple public-intended book or a formal letter. > In that case a Farsi user opinion would probably be: > > Noto Naskh Arabic: acceptable. > Noto Kufi Arabic: Not formal at all. > Amiri and KacstOffice: totally Arabic > KacstBook: acceptable * By "totally Arabic" I'm guessing you mean "not acceptable as the default for Farsi?" * Note we need a combination of header font and body font, so please either refer to pairs, or say "acceptable for the body font/header font/both". * We've noticed that some of these are not usable because of licensing issues (and being abandoned). We need fonts which are free to use and distribute. > For Farsi, I suggest IRTitr for header and IRLotus or IRNazanin for body. > > ... > > These 3 are modified (not created from scratch) fonts from a government > project in Iran to provide a free series of standard Farsi fonts for > personal and commercial use. Both the government Institute and the private > sector contractor are now disbanded and currently it is not possible to > contact the umbrella state agency (http://majazi.ir) to ask about the > license. When you say "modified", do you mean the government made the modification, or modifications of what the government had created initially? In the latter case, who made the modifications? Also - is there an official download location for these fonts? If there are, that website may be enough in terms of license, even possibly via rights implicit in it being available for download. IANAL (I am not a lawyer) though, so I'm not sure. > By the way, Iran does not recognize international copyright so I > reckon you can use them with no worries. That's commendable, I think; but: 1. That does not necessarily mean that it waives copyrights in the other direction, i.e. agrees to international distribution of works created in Iran; and of course - LO is considered as distribution within Iran itself, where the copyright issue is national rather than international. At the very least we would need some clarification on this matter. 2. We also need to make sure that there are no legal problems in states other than Iran. There will probably not be problems here, but we'll still need to ensure that's the case.
(In reply to Munzir Taha from comment #19) > Salaam, another native Arabic user opinion on LibreOffice on Linux > specifically. I very much appreciate all your efforts so don't take any > disagreement as personal. > > First, I am strongly against adding fonts in LibreOffice or any application > for people to use. LibO should only include a font which is essential for > its internal working or templates if there is such a thing. Mostly, that's > unnecessary and it's enough to use generic names like sans, serif, mono, .... > > Which fonts are installed and preferred by the user would be done on the > OS-level through a font management application. This approach saves space, > avoids duplication and conflicts, relieves the apps from updating fonts, > allow personal fonts and system fonts, ... > > What fonts users choose as defaults for all their applications is not the > business of each application either. It's the job of fontconfig in GNU/Linux > to handle this. There are thousands of applications and if each of > (libreoffice, inkscape, gimp, firefox, chromium, calibre ...) would include > their selection of fonts and then ask their userbase to choose a default > font for each and every language, it's a mess, and waste of time and > resources. Why would a Japanese user has Arabic fonts in his system against > his willing and vice versa. Currently I use LibO in ArchLinux which is > wisely built using --without-fonts. I am not sure what's the current > fallback mechanism. If it's hardcoded then this is a bug that should be > fixed by using aliases. > > (In reply to خالد حسني from comment #14) > > (KACST knows nothing about them and I had no luck finding > > anyone who knows anything about them > > Actually, I know a lot about those fonts. I was working with KACST during > that time. I know most of the people involved but this is 15 years ago! The > fonts served a good purpose at that time and one of the first which are > bundled with distros. Currently, the situation, the experience and the tools > are much better so no need to waste time reviving them and I definitely > agree with you to drop them, but also the rest. > > (In reply to Waleed Mortaja from comment #15) > > Unfortunately, The number of Arabic users of libreoffice is not very high to > > begin with, at least in my environment. Can you provide me with links for > > the libreoffice Arabic communities? > > Because LibO still has some serious and annoying issues. When users choose a > font explicitly, LibO ignores it (issue #62063), and we are discussing what > to choose for the user ;) . Also, none of the fonts here are good enough for > any serious publishing but that is another story. The point is we need to > work on these issues before people would take it seriously. Someone should > hire Khaled Hosney for a 1-year contract full time and he can fix them all > inshallah ;)
I've just noticed there are a bunch of potentially usable fonts at Google's font website: https://fonts.google.com/?subset=arabic¬o.script=Arab There are lots of candidates there which are not-ridiculous choices for the title font, and a few which may work as body font, including some we've mentioned, like Noto Naskh and Amiri, but also Lateef, Mirza and Scheherazade. If you don't know those, please check them out. (In reply to Munzir Taha from comment #19) > Salaam, another native Arabic user opinion on LibreOffice on Linux > specifically. I very much appreciate all your efforts so don't take any > disagreement as personal. Indeed, we are all in this together, trying to make LibreOffice better, especially for the novice users, who are more likely to just stick to the default choice of fonts we set for them. > First, I am strongly against adding fonts in LibreOffice or any application > for people to use. LibO should only include a font which is essential for > its internal working or templates if there is such a thing. Mostly, that's > unnecessary and it's enough to use generic names like sans, serif, mono, .... While I can appreciate the aesthetic of your position, it is outside the scope of this bug. This bug is about setting (and possibly bundling) a default Arabic, and Farsi fonts. It is not about the decision of whether to make such language-specific font choices in LO in general. Such choices are made for all languages. For many languages, the choice is well-thought-out, possibly with a relevant font bundled to ensure it is available: English (and other Latin-alphabet languages), Hebrew, and probably others. (It's actually interesting to ask the CJK folks what they did with their default font choices.) For Arabic and for Farsi, what we currently have is just some afterthought of a default, and this is what this bug is out to improve. Your claim/suggestion/demand belongs in a separate bug report. If you file it, mark this one as a "related" bug so that we can notice it here. I have more to say about this subject but I won't start the discussion on its merits here. I will say, though, which is that the choice of a default font does not prevent users from selecting their own fonts; and that a user who is proficient enough to customize their OS' choices of fonts will certainly be able to choose their own combinations of fonts in LibreOffice as well. Thus, regardless of whether your suggestion should or should not be adopted, I don't believe that setting a more decent choice of default fonts for Arabic and Farsi would hurt any users or even badly inconvenience them. Also, for comparison, you may be interested in the discussion we had about the choice of defaults for Hebrew (bug 113538), where this question also came up to some extent. > Currently, the situation, the experience and the tools > are much better so no need to waste time reviving them and I definitely > agree with you to drop them, but also the rest. > ... > none of the fonts here are good enough for > any serious publishing but that is another story. Can you share your experience regarding which newer/better-maintained fonts are available today, which would be a better fit? I realize that you might not be motivated to do this because of your objection in principle, but in parallel to considering your suggestion in principle, this process is also going on. > Because LibO still has some serious and annoying issues. > ... we need to > work on these issues before people would take it seriously. Someone should > hire Khaled Hosney for a 1-year contract full time and he can fix them all > inshallah ;) Munzir - perhaps you might consider joining the Arabic-language Telegram channel, for more general and less bug-specific discussion of the important issues you bring up (the discussion there can also happen in Arabic of course, although when I reply it's generally in English) : https://t.me/+UHz-eKUtVb52P0Kr I could definitely have used your input before this recent LOcon on these subjects...
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #22) > > This bug is about setting (and possibly bundling) a > default Arabic, and Farsi fonts. My reply was to this "possibly bundling" but for sure I am with "setting". > For Arabic and for Farsi, what we currently have is just some > afterthought of a default, and this is what this bug is out to improve. I would say treat Frasi and Arabic separately. The styles preferred by each group is different. > Can you share your experience regarding which newer/better-maintained fonts > are available today, which would be a better fit? I realize that you might > not be motivated to do this because of your objection in principle, Not at all. I will be glad to share my opinion. If you need an ordered fallback list of free fonts then Noto Naskh Arabic (modern), Scheherazade New (Classical), Amiri for CTL_TEXT. If the list would include non-free fonts I would add Calibri, Traditional Arabic as first choices. Why Noto Naskh Arabic in first place? diacritics are next to their letters, has 4 styles, has Noto Kufi Arabic pair to go for CTL_HEADING, and UI and DISPLAY variants to go for UI_SANS and CTL_DISPLAY for a consistent look and feel. Amiri font is great and has its uses but not suitable for long running text with diacritics because they are far from letters and aligned in a way that sometimes causes overlap. > Munzir - perhaps you might consider joining the Arabic-language Telegram > channel... I could definitely have used your input before this > recent LOcon on these subjects... I am now in.