I am wonder if you could add missed Arabic-based Kurdish characters to the default charts, so the Font Designers would care about providing those characters also to support Kurdish in their fonts.
I’m not a Glyphs dev but interested in the topic. Just to check what positional variants and components are needed, I typed the following:
ڕ ـڕ
ڤ ڤڤڤ
ڵ ڵڵڵ
ۆ ـۆ
ێ ێێێ
ە ەەە
YEH seems to take dots in the initial and medial positions; is that correct?
Does AE only exist in the isolated form?
I also noticed that PEH should be in Kurdish (not part of the Arabic language) and is being left out. Could you expand the list to include all the missing letters?
As a side note, I’m all for adding more language options to the side menu, but this discussion opens up a discussion of other 30+ languages that could be considered. Pashto speakers seem to be twice to thrice larger in number than Kurdish, for example.
Also checking in for the positional variants. This is what I have based on our existing glyph data. Can you copy this list and paste it in Glyph > Add Glyphs… (Cmd-Shift-G), and see if something is missing?
No, In Arabic, the characters have dots above and below on some of their characters. In Kurdish, we have inverted circumflex/diacritic, something like [ ◌̌ ].
Again, No. AE, has the ISOLATED and FINAL forms.
For PEH, you are right, but as far as Arabic and Persian characters mostly are supported, that’s why I only mentioned those not in Kurdish. Most of the Persian and Kurdish characters are the same. Here is a complete list of Kurdish characters:
Character
Unicode
Code Point Name
example
ئ
U+0626
ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE
ئێستا
ا
U+0627
ARABIC LETTER ALEF
دار
ب
U+0628
ARABIC LETTER BEH
باران
ت
U+062A
ARABIC LETTER TEH
تەماتە
ج
U+062C
ARABIC LETTER JEEM
جوان
ح
U+062D
ARABIC LETTER HAH
حەوت
خ
U+062E
ARABIC LETTER KHAH
خاتوون
د
U+062F
ARABIC LETTER DAL
دابان
ر
U+0631
ARABIC LETTER REH
کورد
ز
U+0632
ARABIC LETTER ZAIN
زین
س
U+0633
ARABIC LETTER SEEN
سیمین
ش
U+0634
ARABIC LETTER SHEEN
شیاو
ع
U+0639
ARABIC LETTER AIN
عەرەبی
غ
U+063A
ARABIC LETTER GHAIN
غوربەت
ف
U+0641
ARABIC LETTER FEH
فەڕش
ق
U+0642
ARABIC LETTER QAF
قیست
ل
U+0644
ARABIC LETTER LAM
لێوانلێو
م
U+0645
ARABIC LETTER MEEM
مەم
ن
U+0646
ARABIC LETTER NOON
نێوان
ه
U+0647
ARABIC LETTER HEH
هاوار
و
U+0648
ARABIC LETTER WAW
وریا
پ
U+067E
ARABIC LETTER PEH
پیتۆڵ
چ
U+0686
ARABIC LETTER TCHEH
چوارچێوە
ڕ
U+0695
ARABIC LETTER REH WITH SMALL V BELOW
ڕووبەڕوو
ژ
U+0698
ARABIC LETTER JEH
ژیان
ڤ
U+06A4
ARABIC LETTER VEH
ڤیان
ک
U+06A9
ARABIC LETTER KEHEH
کەرکووک
گ
U+06AF
ARABIC LETTER GAF
گورگ
ڵ
U+06B5
ARABIC LETTER LAM WITH SMALL V
پڵاو
ۆ
U+06C6
ARABIC LETTER OE
دۆلان
ی
U+06CC
ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH
سیر
ێ
U+06CE
ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH SMALL V
پێرێ
ە
U+06D5
ARABIC LETTER AE
بەهرەمەند
If Arabic and Persian characters are supported, only these six characters needed to be added for Kurdish to be supported:
As far as I don’t have a Mac at the moment, I asked a friend to install glyphsapp and check these characters if all the characters included or not. Based on the above screenshot I have got, no. Some characters such as [ ڵ ], has all four different shapes exactly like [ ل ]. Or for [ ڕ ] we need both ISOLATED and FINAL exactly such as characters [ ر ] or [ ژ ] or [ ز ]. For [ ە ] (U+06D5) we have only two possible shapes. ISOLATED and FINAL. In both of them, the following character should NOT join to the next character. only it should be close to it. Some examples: [ بەهار - فەڕەنسا - هەولێر ]. It is different from [ ه / U+0647 ]. HEH will join the the characters after it. But AE should NOT.
Here in this image, I have tried to show all the possible shapes which might have.
If need more clarification, I will try to be available until all misunderstandings will be sorted out.
Thank you all for your efforts and kind assistance in adding support to Kurdish.
I think I have that in my list. Yeh with V above appears as isolated, initial, medial, final:
Same for ae:
Do not trust the preview in the screenshot too much. This is just the representation of the system font, which may not be accurate. Better to look at the names: the suffixes .init, .medi and .fina indicate the position. Isolated is the default (no suffix).