r12a
commented
3 months ago The first comment in this issue contains text that will automatically appear in one or more gap-analysis documents as a subsection with the same title as this issue. Any edits made to that comment will be immediately available in the Editor's draft of the document. Proposals for changes or discussion of the content can be made by adding comments below this point.
Relevant gap analysis documents include: _Arabic/Persian • Kashmiri_
This issue is applicable to Urdu, Kashmiri, and other Arabic script orthographies.
Languages such as Urdu and Kashmiri are written in a nastaliq style of Arabic, and authors will typically want any font fallback to select another nastaliq font, rather than a naskh or other font.
More:
The GAP
Currently there is no way to tell the browser to fall back to a nastaliq font, rather than a naskh or other font.
Neither Gecko, Blink, nor Webkit support this. Before they can, CSS needs to provide a way for authors to indicate that a nastaliq generic font should be used.
Priority
This is a high priority for languages such as Urdu and Kashmiri, where nastaliq fonts are the norm, and incorrect substitutions may cause readability and cultural issues. It is also a useful feature for other languages, such as Persian or Kurdish, where nastaliq styles may be used for certain types of text.
Tests & results
Interactive test, font-family:generic(nastaliq) will apply a nastaliq font in Urdu
Action taken
Discussion document: Generic font families
CSS discussion threads:
Bug reports: Gecko • Blink • Webkit
Outcomes
The CSS Fonts 4 spec now defines a generic(ident) syntax which will be used for newly-introduced, and especially for script-specific, generics.
generic(nastaliq) has been added as one of the generic family names.
Browsers are not yet supporting that.