I agree with your first point and I think I expressed the same view.
It's good to know about desktop publishing tools for Nast'aaligh. It's quite an accomplishment if it does justice to Persian Nast'aaligh.
Nast'aaligh is not meant to be for the main text of a book or newspaper. If that's what Peter and you meant about ease of reading, you are quite right. Nobody wants Apple Chancery or Zapf as main text either.
Assuming that programing in desktop publishing tools does justice to Persian Nast'aaligh, we should be half way there in implementing it in Open Type (I wouldn't know)
I really like to add Pakistani Nast'aaligh to my arsenal but to me the similarity of Pakistani and Persian Nast'aaligh is minimal and I'm not sure I'd like it to be for the main text of Farsi either. But this is a matter of taste and it doesn't speak for ease or speed of reading.
Behnam
On 2-Jan-04, at 2:37 AM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
Not quite true. Some random facts:
1. Pakistani Nastaligh is completely different from Persian one. Pakistani Nastaligh does fit in the normal font design practice that is done for Naskh.
2. Persian Nastaligh desktop publishing tools ARE available in market for at least five years now. They are extensively used in advertisements AND in books, included Persian Literature books in high schools. So the reason you don't see it in any book, is the difficulty to read it. Or if you prefer the rewording: that it reduces the speed of reading. It's not true with Pakistani Nastaligh.
3. And to disagree you completely ;-), Persian Nastaligh IS possible using advanced features of the Open Type spec. But to my best knowledge they are not implemented in any system yet.
behdad
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