One set of fonts I didn’t have a chance to include in last week’s font wrap are Arabic script fonts. When discussing Arabic script fonts, it’s important to note which language or region a font has a been design for because the requirements for writing Arabic versus Persian versus Urdu and so forth can vary (just as they do for English vs. German).
I should also comment that I am not an Arabic script typography expert, but these fonts are recommended by reliable sources. So with that warning:
Arabic
- Arabeyes.Org Fonts – Many designs. See Gallery of Unicode Fonts for font screenshots, primarilly designed for Arabic language
- Microsoft True Type Open Pack – Windows only, but many designs and support for multiple languages
Persian (Iran)
Urdu & Sindhi (Pakistan/India)
- Arabic SIL Fonts – Windows users download OTF; Mac Users download AAT
- Nafees Riqa and Nfees Nastaleeq (Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing)
- Urdu Nastaliq Unicode (Windows)
- Urdu Word Processing for Windows
- Free Urdu Unicode Fonts and Keyboards
Pashto (Afghanistan)
Uighur and Central Asian Turkic
I also generally recommend Gallery of Unicode fonts which is a Unicode font directory. The Web master very helpfully splits many of the fonts into separate language pages.
