Arabic-How to assign and use alternate glyph?

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M Hatim Kausarali
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri May 25, 2018 8:39 pm

Arabic-How to assign and use alternate glyph?

Post by M Hatim Kausarali »

Hi!!

In Arabic, there are basically three forms for almost all letters (i.e. Initial Form, Medial Form, and Final Form).

I'm still confused :?: how to make use of an alternate final form of heh doachashmee, means I have two different type of the final form, and I want to make it usable as per like of an individual to use out of both whatever it seems appropriate or what he desires to use.
As one goes in the system while other should be in insert/symbols in MS Word.
Well it shows in the insert/symbols, and for the ease of the typist I created a custom keyboard layout using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator and changed the same key(i.e, I) with shift+I for the alternate final form.

Now, in both the case, 1) Insert symbol, and 2) Shift+I with the custom keyboard, the character(alternate heh doachashmee) comes and is placed properly, but the problem is that the previous character also goes to the final form, whereas the previous character should go to the initial form or medial form and should connect with the alternate final form of heh.


Please enlighten me on how to make this alternate final form usable.
Thank You,
Hatim
Erwin Denissen
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Re: Arabic-How to assign and use alternate glyph?

Post by Erwin Denissen »

You will need to insert actual Arabic characters, as those are required with correct functioning OpenType layout features.

So just inserting unmapped glyphs or characters that are mapped to the private use area will certainly fail to work.
Erwin Denissen
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Yahya Al Zoghali
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Re: Arabic-How to assign and use alternate glyph?

Post by Yahya Al Zoghali »

You should make your designs for the same glyph you want, suppose it is the hehfinal, and give it the names like: hehfinal.Alt0; hehfinal.Alt1; hehfinal.Alt02 and proceed its proper opentype table in FC's Opentype Designer dialog. In a layout program like Adobe InDesign, while you select a text contains hehfinal, you will be able to choose an alternative glyph you like from opentype palette for the hehfinal shapes (normal, docheshmeh, short).
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