Improvement for Malay Jawi Script | Plex Arabic

[niskala5570]

Hello there ^^

I would like to request a fix/change for some glyph. Mainly to better support Malay Jawi Script.

Code Point	Character	Unicode Name	ْProblem
U+06BD	ڽ	Arabic Letter Noon With Three Dots Above	Letter not connecting
U+0674	ٴ	Arabic Letter Hamza High	Alt position for Hamza Three Quarter
U+204F	⁏	Reversed Semicolon	Add glyph
U+2E41	⹁	Reversed Comma	Add glyph

Noon With Three Dots Above (Nya)

This letter Nya kinda unique in its dot placement.

The dot in initial and medial is placed below the glyph and not above nor it's ignored like Urdu Noon Ghunna. In other word, it's similar to Urdu Peh پ. This is to avoid Nya to be read as Theh ث.

The correct presentation:

Unicode 17.0.0 Annotation

Contrary to what is suggested by its Unicode character name, U+06BD displays with the three dots below the letter pointing downward when it is in the initial or medial position, making it look exactly like the initial and medial forms of U+067E پ ARABIC LETTER PEH.

Hamza Three Quarter

A bit of context for Hamza Three Quarter

Recent (2022) unicode proposal for HTQ was rejected and from my reading here (page 8), we should use the Hamza High Kazakh codepoint for this, even though it's different in size and position.

However, the general consensus amongst the group was to unify THREE QUARTER HIGH HAMZA with
U+0674 HIGH HAMZA, and to highly encourage font designers to support the glyph with the expected
shape and positioning for Jawi, employing a language tag or creating a Jawi-specific font. Encoding a
new character would take several years, and text representation would be inconsistent, causing other
problems for users.

Unicode 17.0.0 annotation for this.

Malay Jawi uses U+0674 ٴ ARABIC LETTER HIGH HAMZA. In Jawi, the letter is the same size as U+0621 ء ARABIC LETTER HAMZA; however, unlike U+0621, it is positioned above the baseline at three-quarters height of the U+0627 ا ARABIC LETTER ALEF. Font designers can use language tagging in order to support the preferred shapes for both Kazakh and Jawi in multilingual fonts.

Some fonts on Google Fonts, such as Amiri, Noto Sans Naskh Arabic, and Aref Ruqaa, already support Jawi and use this approach and defaulting Hamza High codepoint to HTQ.

It's best to add both locl OpenType feature for this.

HTQ position

The HTQ is positioned lower than the hamza above; slightly above the baseline.

Reversed Comma and Semicolon

Jawi use reversed comma and semicolon but since this punctuation does'nt supported most of the time, people mainly used Arabic Comma.

Though it's still being used in some publication that use custom font still use this character, one example is this newspaper from Utusan Melayu.

The best approach is to add this glyph in its unicode while also add locl feature for MLY on Arabic Comma and Semicolon.

Test text

Malayan Declaration of Independence:

ڤمشهوران کمرديرکاٴن

دڠن نام اللّه يڠمهاموره لاݢي مڠسيهاني⹁ سݢل ڤوجي باݢي اللّه يڠ مهابرکواس دان صلواة دان سلام کاٴتسڽ سکلين رسولڽ.

بهواسڽ اوله کران تله تيباله ماسڽ باݢي اومة ڤرسکتوان تانه ملايو اين منچاڤي طرف سواة بڠسا يڠمرديکا لاݢي بردولة سام ستيمبل کدودقکنڽ دڠن سݢل بڠسا دسلوره دنيا.

دان بهواسڽ اوله کران دڠن ڤرجنجين يڠدسبوة نماڽ ڤرجنجين ڤرسکتوان تانه ملايو تاهون 1957 يڠدڤربواة دانتارا دولي يڠمهامليا بݢيندا کوٴين دڠن دولي٢ يڠمهامليا راج٢ مݢري ملايو مک تله دڤرستوجوٴي بهوا نݢري٢ ملايو ياٴيت جوهر⹁ ڤهڠ⹁ نݢري سمبيلن⹁ سلاڠور⹁ قدح⹁ ڤرليس⹁ کلنتن⹁ ترڠݢانو⹁ دان ڤيرق سرة نݢري يڠدهولوڽ دنماکن نݢري سلت ياٴيت ملاک دان ڤولو ڤينڠ مولاٴي درڤد 31 هاريبولن اوݢس‌ة تاهون 1957⹁ هندقله منجادي سبواه ڤرسکتوان بهارو باݢي نݢري٢ يڠبرنام ڤرسکتوان تانه ملايو.

Random

ستياڤ ڤاݢي اثنين⹁ کامي برديري تݢق دان مڽاڽيکن لاݢو نݢاراکو دڠن ڤنوه حرمت دان برسماڠت.

[BoldMonday]

Thanks for your feedback. An update for Plex Sans Arabic has been scheduled for the upcoming months and we'll try to incorporate this issue too.

[niskala5570]

Thank you so much! ^^