Since the printing of Arabic with early metal movable types, many compromises have been made to adapt the script with a technology not designed for its specific needs. One such compromise is the ‘Kashida’ or ‘Tatweel’; today a separate character with a designated unicode codepoint, traditionally, the kashida is an extended variant of letterforms. This talk will discuss the historic context and use of the Arabic extension, and demonstrate how, by using variable font technology, the long standing issue of organic extensions can be resolved to make possible a more dynamic typesetting for the Arabic script. While this talk focuses on the Arabic script, the methods can also be extended to other connecting writing systems, as well as Latin script styles.
Sahar Afshar
Type designer, Researcher (Iran)
