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.