Milo Th. Authentic Arabic: a Case Study. Right-to-left Font Structure, Font Design, and Typography // Manuscripta Orientalia. Vol. 8. No. 1. March 2002. P. 49—61.
As the most elaborate of all of right-to-left scripts. Arabic
script presents an unusual challenge. The present article
focuses on an interaction between text encoding and
font technology against the background of understanding
the structure of Arabic script. The oldest known Arabic
scripts consist of a single layer of ambivalent or multivalent
letters. An additional script layer, similar to vowel signs,
gradually emerged (with regional variations) to disambiguate
letters. Understanding how Arabic script emerged and
evolved provides clues both to encoding and rendering
issues of Arabic or related scripts. W c deal here with a previously
underestimated but very powerful aspect of Arabic
script which makes it fundamentally archigraphemic in
structure.
An archigrapheme occurs when the distinction between
two or more letters is neutralized. The archigrapheme is
a graphic unit that consists of the shared features of
neutralized letters minus the features that differentiate
them. In the archigraphemic analysis of Arabic script,
vowels and dots are different layers of additional, variable
features.
These issues are relevant in the context of Unicode-related
discussions, because (i) today the Unicode Standard
assumes limited, grapheme-based (i.e. explicit) use of
Arabic script; (ii) grapheme and ligature-based legacy technologies
have led to misconceptions and inconsistencies
both in the code structure and visual rendering of the
languages written in Arabic script; (iii) archigraphemic
encoding of scripts like Arabic is the key to sophisticated
operations on computerized Arabic text corpora and addresses
apparent regional and diachronic variation; (iv) the
archigraphemic approach is fundamental to proper Arabic
font technology; (v) archigraphemic font technology creates
optimal conditions for contemporary Arabic font
design; (vi) operating systems need to specify the open architecture
required to facilitate the optimal technology for
rendering a given script, to give the user access to existing
and future expert font rendering and layout mechanisms...
Заседание государственной комиссии по представлению научных докладов об основных результатах подготовленных научно-квалификационных работ (диссертаций) 10.10.2023 (вторник) переносится с 12:00 на 14:00.
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