Pakistani calligrapher created new Urdu font for web
Sawaira Sial
Posted On February 10, 2017
Nasrullah Mehr and Zeeshan Mehr, father and son by relation; have launched a new Urdu font for internet. Both are calligraphers by profession. The new urdu font is named, “Mehr-e-Nastaleeq“. It took them a total of ten years to bring this font to internet.
The father, Nasrullah Mehr is an award winning calligrapher and he is associated with calligraphy for 30 years now. His work is published in magazines, books and newspapers. Due to fast growing internet his business was not able to do well.
The son, Zeeshan Mehr; then decided to join computer programming. He was also associated with family business. He aimed to develop a new refined font for internet users.
The Vice Chancellor of Information Technology University, Dr. Umar Saif and Dr. Agha Ali Raza who is linguistic technology expert ay ITU’s Center for Speech and Language Technologies (CSaLT) laboratory helped Zeeshan to achieve his goals.
Open Type Font technology has been used by Mehr-e-Nastaleeq. This is an advanced technology that allows better and efficient typesetting features that include:
- small caps
- alternates
- ligatures
and also other inside the font rather than separate expert set fonts.
It is supported by Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux, and Android among other operating systems. It has about 450 glyphs that include symbols and English support.
It also allows electronic communication and web publishing. This means it can work on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Safari without requiring a separate plug-in. It will be just like writing on in page Urdu.
The developers got Mehr-e-Nastaleeq licensed by US based non-profit Creative Commons as well.
Urdu Font Features:
We are listing down some of the features specific to this font:
- Fast rendering speed as compared to other Nastaliq fonts.
- OTF Font file size is amazingly reduced up to 104 kb only.
- Best look according to National Calligraphic Standards.
- Open Type, character based, Lahori Nastaliq Font.
- Aaraab and marks support.
- Limited Kashida support.
- Reduced line height.
View a sample of this font here.
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