Legible Farsi Font finally Arrives!

Legible Farsi Font finally Arrives!
by bahmani
19-Apr-2011
 

As a writer and a partially professional graphic designer, I often face the dilemma of Farsi text on a computer.

As I am sure many of you know what I'm talking about and have experienced the problem. The various versions of the Farsi font with all the serifs and ligatures that are required, simply has not been as easy to read online as you'd think it should be by now.

This is because Iranian font designers (is there one?) have until now not spent the time to design a fully functional Farsi font that was optimized for the web or the computer screen.

The relatively low resolution of the computer screen (only 72 dots per inch) versus the traditional higher print resolution (300 dpi and greater) have made this too hard, and most have simply been porting over the traditional print version fonts to the web, without working on them to increase their quality and legibility on-screen and on-line.

Until now!

The BBC site (leave it to the BBC) has recently started using a font that is an absolute pleasure to read, I am putting up a sample of it, but you really need to go to the site to see for yourselves.

This is an equivalent to the English Arial or it looks a bit more rounded, so let's say Arial Rounded to be fair, but still there is a tremendous improvement in overall readability.

The other thing I like about this font, is that they seem to have solved the spacing problem that often plagues Farsi language sites using the old bad fonts. Words seem to be cut off or an extra space inserted where it shouldn't be, that causes you to re-read or pause, or skip ahead or back to check the context to see if it was done on purpose or is the spacing problem. No such problems now with this BBC font!

This revelation also proves once again, that while we may be lagging behind in many areas, eventually we catch up. Let's hope this 20 year delay in font technology can apply to governance systems!

Enjoy!

Balatarin
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more from bahmani
 
sourena

Persian Webfonts and Nastaliq

by sourena on Tue May 24, 2011 07:50 PM PDT

First of all, I do not see anything wrong if a talented Lebanese typographer designs a font for BBC, but I should mention that the designer is not Tarek Attrisi but Titus Nemeth, a typographer from the Netherlands. Tarek Attrisi is the designer of the fonts used in the Persian BBC's logo and the TV programs. The typeface of the webfont used on the Arabic and Persian BBC is called Nassim. You can read Titus Nemeth's post about it here on his website.

Secondly the technology used to load the fonts is available for Arabic script now. Currently any website can use Arabic and Persian Webfonts. It means we can get rid of ugly Tahoma and Times New Roman forever, if the website owners care to change the font.


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comments

?

by comments on Sat Apr 23, 2011 05:14 AM PDT

What's wrong if an Arab company desinged the font??

Thanks or no thanks to them?!!


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ComraidsConcubine

World Service laying people off and

by ComraidsConcubine on Thu Apr 21, 2011 03:32 AM PDT

 British taxpayers' and licencing fees paid out for some godknowswhat.



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alimostofi

Bahmani: Can you explain why

by alimostofi on Wed Apr 20, 2011 02:23 PM PDT

Bahmani: Can you explain why the Android platform has still failed to show Persian fonts? And even funnier, the new Windows 7 for mobiles does not show the Persian fonts on this site, whilst the old Windows Mobile platform worked fine.

Ali Mostofi

//www.alimostofi.com

 


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Parham

Actually...

by Parham on Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:01 AM PDT

.. I love the Farsi font Apple uses on its products, called "Geeza Pro". I find it to be the best font there is for reading and writing in Farsi and certainly a lot prettier than the new font used by BBC.
In fact, my fonts changed on my Macs recently due to a Microsoft bug that comes with Office, and I was really hating life until I could find a way to change them back into Geeza Pro.
Try it, you will like it.


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Hafez for Beginners

Nastaliq?

by Hafez for Beginners on Wed Apr 20, 2011 09:06 AM PDT

Thanks for the post. I didn't understand, can we download the BBC font, to use it, too? At least things are changing, and thanks for the update!

I'm waiting for the day you could just type and Nastaliq would come up! Can you imagine how wonderful that would be? - All our miniatures are adored the world over, in part because of the aesthetic quality of the Nastliq script. Do let us know if you have any info. on this. I haven't been able to find it.

Afsaneh


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alx1711

To be honest i prefer

by alx1711 on Wed Apr 20, 2011 06:08 AM PDT

To be honest i prefer reading and writting in Partin (Parsi-Latin) rather than "Crab & Toad" [Kharchang Gorbage] we are using...


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پندارنیک

The Brits, again

by پندارنیک on Wed Apr 20, 2011 02:21 AM PDT

Neat, and for the sake of correct spelling,necessary. I hope it'll be used in our own IC pretty soon.

Useful blog.


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Roger_Rabbit

Farsi font designed by an Arab owned company!

by Roger_Rabbit on Wed Apr 20, 2011 02:16 AM PDT

 

Before you get too excited about the so called BBC Farsi font, take a look at this site and the imbedded link. The font, inspired by another Farsi font called Roya was designed by Tarrik Attrisi, a Lebanese owned Holland based firm of font designers and it is not exclusive to the BBC as it is to be licesned for the public's use soon. Besides I found the font the Tairk Attrisi font not hugely different from many similar fonts available on the net. Personally I think no font beats the quintessentially Persian font of nast-e aligh.


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