Request to add Quranic characters

[Elyasa-Abdulakher]

Hi @iyadh @aleftypefoundry, I hope you're doing fine,
I really like your bouazzi-maghribi project because of the beauty of the Arabic letters, thus, I have a personal project (still not public, since it's not too advanced yet) where I want to implement this letter font to create a Mus'haf Al-Qur'an for Qira'at Nafi'. However, I notice that every time I try to modify (in order to add Quranic symbols, use Maghrebi forms of qaf, kaf and noon [dotless at the end and isolated]) and then generate the letter font on Fontforge (since I work on Ubuntu), the letters lose their cursiveness, despite the substitutions are still correct.

Is there anyhow I can modify this letter font without altering the cursiveness of the Arabic Alphabet?
Otherwise, do you have any plans soon to add Quranic symbols to this letterfont?

Your answer will be appreciated. Thank you in advance and best regards.

[iyadh]

Hi @Elyasa-Abdulakher,

Thank you so much for your kind words and for taking an interest in Bouazzi Maghribi! It means a lot to hear that you find the font inspiring, and your project sounds amazing—bringing it into a Mus’haf Al-Qur’an for Qira’at Nafi‘ is a beautiful idea.

About adding Quranic symbols: I’d suggest checking out the Quran Data project. It provides UTF-8 encoded plain text files that follow the best Unicode practices, avoiding font-specific hacks and unrelated code points. This ensures reliability and consistency when working with Quranic symbols.

Since Bouazzi Maghribi was developed in Glyphs (a macOS-only app), I understand it might be a bit tricky to work with on FontForge. If it helps, I can convert the font into a UFO or SFD file so it’s more compatible with FontForge and easier for you to modify.

As for the issue with losing cursiveness, it sounds like something might be going wrong with the OpenType features when the font is regenerated in FontForge. If you’re able to, could you share a quick screen recording of how you’re adding new glyphs and generating the font? That’ll help me get a better idea of what’s happening and figure out how to resolve it.

Thanks again for reaching out, and please don’t hesitate to ask if there’s anything else I can do to help!

Best regards,
Mohamed

[Elyasa-Abdulakher]

Hi Mohamed and thank you for your message,
Here I attach the video with a small example of what's happening.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3ebfd579-a1a0-44c0-8677-b81210a854c8

Best regards.

[iyadh]

That's what I suspected, you are directly editing a binary file, that would lead to various problems after saving as you are altering it. The best solution as I see it, is to edit an sfd file, then compile it to ttf/otf. I'll try to add an sfd file in the next few days, and add dotless final and isolated feh, qaf, and noon in the way.
Is there any other glyphs you need I can help with?

[iyadh]

@Elyasa-Abdulakher Now you have a UFO file that FontForge can handle with no issues. As for removing dots from some terminal glyphs, you already have dotless glyphs you can use directly; fehDotless-ar, fehDotless-ar.fina, qafDotless-ar, qafDotless-ar.fina, noonghunna-ar, and noonghunna-ar.fina .

[Elyasa-Abdulakher]

Hi Mohamed and sorry for the delay,
I have been a bit busy on other projects, but I'll take your advice into consideration.

Best regards.