[XeTeX] xelatex not connecting letters in awami nastaliq font

[Jonathan Kew]

On 21/02/2021 14:55, Kamal Abdali wrote:
> Thank you Lorna and Jonathan for solving the problem.
> 
> Jonathan, I almost always need fontspec options like 
> [Script=Arabic,Scale=xx,WordSpace=yy] because different nastaliq fonts 
> seem to have very different letter sizes and word spacing behaviors. 
> Moreover, for some reason the Noto Nastaliq Urdu font doesn't connect 
> letters if the Script=Arabic option is omitted.

Noto Nastaliq Urdu is an OpenType font; OpenType requires that the 
correct script is specified so that it knows what shaping engine to use. 
(There's a default "generic" shaper that is used for Latin & other 
simple scripts, so in that case nothing needs to be explicitly 
specified, but Arabic and other "complex" scripts require the script to 
be specified so that script-specific rules can be applied.)

Awami Nastaliq is a Graphite font; no script option is required as the 
shaping behavior is encoded entirely within the font; the engine is 
script-independent.

So the Script option is not relevant for Awami, but you do need the 
Renderer=Graphite option to use the proper font engine. (The default 
word spacing in Awami should generally be quite good, especially if you 
use the \XeTeXinterwordspaceshaping=1 setting, but I assume it would 
still work to adjust it if you wish.)

JK

> 
> Kamal Abdali
> 
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 5:33 AM Jonathan Kew <jfkthame at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jfkthame at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On 21/02/2021 03:27, Lorna Evans wrote:
>      > Awami Nastaliq is a Graphite font. In XeTeX you would need to say
>     "Awami
>      > Nastaliq/GR". I'm not sure if that syntax would work in XeLaTeX, but
>      > somehow you have to indicate Graphite.
>      >
> 
>     The xelatex/fontspec way to say this would be
> 
>         \newfontfamily\urdufont[Renderer=Graphite]{Awami Nastaliq}
> 
>     (You might also want to add the option
> 
>         \XeTeXinterwordspaceshaping=1
> 
>     to your document, for better word spacing results.)
> 
>     JK
> 
>      > On Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 6:24 PM Kamal Abdali <kabdali at gmail.com
>     <mailto:kabdali at gmail.com>
>      > <mailto:kabdali at gmail.com <mailto:kabdali at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>      >
>      >     XeLaTeX (in combination with Polyglossia) is not rendering
>     the Awami
>      >     Nastaliq font properly. The letters in this font are being
>     displayed
>      >     without being connected together. I haven't encountered this
>     problem
>      >     with any other nastaleeq font. Nor have I seen this problem when
>      >     using Awami in word processors.
>      >
>      >     %demo.tex
>      >     \documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
>      >     \usepackage{polyglossia}
>      >     \setmainlanguage{urdu}
>      >     \newfontfamily\urdufont[Script=Arabic]{Awami Nastaliq}
>      >     \newfontfamily\altnast[Script=Arabic]{Jameel Noori Nastaleeq}
>     % or
>      >     any other nastaliq font
>      >     \setlength\parindent{0pt}
>      >     \begin{document}
>      >     عوامی نستعلیق\\
>      >     \altnast{جمیل نوری نستعلیق}
>      >     \end{document}
>      >
>      >     demo.pdf attached.
>      >
>      >     Kamal Abdali
>      >
>