Direction of slant for italic/oblique RTL text #3
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r12a
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It may be important to the discussion to point out that formalized typographic practices for both Adlam and N'ko are still being developed. When we (JamraPatel) reached out to both communities to see if an Italic typeface would be beneficial, both communities expressed a desire to have one. Over the past few years, as the ability to use both of these scripts more readily in computing has increased, the need to be able to set more complex copy has increased as well. Both communities see the benefit of having italic typefaces to add some semantic value to their copy. On-line N'ko has historically used synthetic obliques for things like by-lines on articles. (see image below from kanjamadi.org)
Since neither script had any precedent for a drawn italic typeface, we asked each community on how they would like to see it drawn. This is how N'ko ended up with the leftward lean and Adlam with a rightward lean in our typeface. Some of the early Adlam writing samples show a rightward lean so that was likely a factor. To my knowledge our typeface has the first drawn italicized N'ko and Adlam, so this is all still a bit new. Ajami is a bit different. Since it currently doesn't have widespread use in computing environments, there is isn't yet a demand for italics or obliques. Market edition literature is all produced by hand and there is no evidence of slanted lettering. This may change over time. |
r12a
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i:letterforms
RTL African scripts include N'Ko, Adlam, & Ajami.
This issue asks questions about the requirements for oblique text in these scripts, and provides preliminary text for a gap-analysis topic. (There is a similar issue for Standard Arabic/Persian at w3c/alreq#93.)
Questions
RTL italicised text for Arabic and Hebrew can be found leaning to the left, rather than to the right as in English.
[Q1] In what direction should African RTL text lean when oblique?
The Jamra-Patel site has a couple of nice examples of italicised text. First, N'Ko, where text leans to the left:
The example of italicised Adlam text, however, leans to the right:
[Q2] Should embedded Latin (or other LTR) text lean to the left or right, when the surrounding text leans to the left?
Here's an example in Standard Arabic:
Support on the Web
Unless a font comes with an italic or oblique face, slanted text on the Web will be produced synthetically by the browser skewing the text. I think i'm safe in saying that no mechanism is currently specified in any browser for left-leaning skews, but provision for it is made in the CSS Fonts Level 4 draft.
I'm not aware of any tests for this behaviour, but i may write some, if time allows.
Prioritisation of this gap
Third question:
[Q3] Is slanted/oblique/italicised text a common feature of these scripts. Do users expect to have it and use it regularly, or is it perhaps an artefact of Western-based digitalization whose need is not felt by users of these scripts?
What colour would we use to describe this situation in the Language Matrix?
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