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Request for web font for use on Wikimedia projects with Punjabi Shahmukhi (pnb) and Saraiki (skr): Gulzar
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Description

Pinging @KartikMistry who suggested I make a separate task at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T118677

Of the available fonts, Gulzar, available at https://gulzarfont.org/ under SIL Open Font License 1.1, is the only font I have been able to find which does all of the following for Punjabi Shahmukhi (pnb) and Saraiki (skr):

  • Render the extended characters ࣇ and ݨ correctly (Noto Nastaliq Urdu puts the "tah" on the side instead of the top in the first case, and renders the second case a different proportion to ن, which is not supposed to happen)
  • Renders diacritical glyphs such as the hamzah in a manner that is typical of print works in Punjabi and Saraiki
  • Avoids "dot collisions" that occur at certain common letter combinations in other fonts

The inclusion of this as a webfont, and even using this as default for text with codes pnb and skr, would be greatly appreciated. It would make the lexemes I have been adding more accessible to users viewing on mobile devices and who do not know how to set up custom CSS, since people used to reading Punjabi in Nastaliq can find it difficult to read in the Naksh style.

Example of dot collision comparison between Noto Nastaliq Urdu (top) and Gulzar (bottom), rendering the name of the city of Mirpur, Pakistan is attached to illustrate the advantage of this font.

unknown-43.png (103×129 px, 1 KB)

unknown-21.png (106×114 px, 1 KB)

Event Timeline

I will add that we should wait until this issue is resolved before adding the font: https://github.com/googlefonts/Gulzar/issues/56
(It does not seem like it will take long.)

I will update this thread when the next version is available

@KartikMistry The GitHub issue above has been resolved, along with fixes for rendering several ligatures, in the latest version v1.002. I would say the font is ready to be added

Also, I am not sure if this is within the scope of this ticket, but enabling the "swash" feature where it is used is a good idea. Maybe this is something I have to work out where the right CSS files are, this is explained here https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-alternates

Italics do not really work for Arabic-based scripts and especially not Nastaliq. It can result in broken glyph rendering. Enabling the "swash" feature is a viable alternative for emphasised text on Wikimedia projects. It would also be useful for typography templates on Wikisource.

Actually that can be achieved with TemplateStyles once the font is added ^