Raqeem converter script for Adobe Illustrator

Kaled Mana

I want to make a script to convert writing from Arabic letters to Raqeem letters with the features below.

Features

1- This script works only on the Adobe illustrator application.
2- The download script can only work on one copy of Adobe illustrator on one computer.
3- This script does not work on portable versions of illustrator applications.
4- This script works with all illustrator versions.

Idea

Arabic classical letters writing in 2 cases for every single letter, upper and small cases but In small cases, there are additional 3 cases for every single letter so the total, in general, is 4 cases.
In Raqeem writing, there are only two cases upper and small only and there are no cases in small it is just one case so the total, in general, will stay two cases.

Process

To achieve the final results in the script should do two things:

1- convert the Arabic classical one upper letter to Raqeem upper letter.
2- convert the Arabic classical one upper letter to Raqeem small letter case.

How it works

FONT TO SHAPE

1- User inter letter or words in Arabic upper case.
2- Option button to switching from Arabic upper case to Raqeem upper case shape as an outline.
3- Option button to switching from Arabic upper case to Raqeem lower case.
4- The switching option could work with multi letters or single letter stand letter or in word or verses.
5- The Raqeem shape glyph's in the action of press the switching button will be posted in the open document as shape (outline font glyph).

Copyright

1- Raqeem is a new typeface system create by designer Mr. Khaled Al-Mana and this project and script intellectual property and rights are own by Mr. Khaled Al Mana only.
2- The Property rights that refer to the owner Khaled Al-Mana must be included in the main project file to clarify and confirm the rights and not include any other name. If any other name is included, he has no right to any artistic, literary, commercial or legal ownership or copyright or Intellectual property.
3- License and Readme text files for the project folder will be created by Mr.Khlaled Al Mana only.
4- The developer will receive the amount agreed upon through negotiations in exchange for coding services that he provides only.
5- Mr. Khaled Al Mana will pay for a developer for his services the amount the developer accepted during to negotiation.

Table of Glyph's, Numbers, and Marks.

41 Arabic letters upper cases 41 Raqeem letters upper cases
41 Raqeem letters lower cases

Design

1- Mr.Kaled Al Mana will give the developer all Glyph's, Numbers, and Marks designs in an illustrator file.
2- All the Arabic letters and the match one in Raqeem with two positions in upper and lower cases. 3- With names for each one.

Note

Text on script interface just to clear the idea and it will be changed to Arabic or Raqeem glyphs at the final interface.

Kaled Mana

Script window

Kaled Mana

General Idea

Kaled Mana

Full of Raqeem alphabet 28 glyphs

https://twitter.com/kaledm74/status/1431378148319535110/photo/1

Christian Thalmann

I think the software you're looking for is simply a font. You input Arabic text and it outputs the glyphs you want. You just have to use the same glyph for the isolated, initial, medial, and final forms of a letter.

(One font each for the upper and lower case, or you could even store one cut in the «Italics» of the other...)

Or are you attached to the exclusivity to Illustrator? Is this meant to facilitate monetization?

I doubt you're going to generate enough interest to make people pay for it; Raqeem has all the disadvantages of Latinization while lacking all the benefits. If your main aim is to popularize it, I would suggest making the design Open Source and giving it away for free.

John Savard

Christian Thalmann said:

Or are you attached to the exclusivity to Illustrator? Is this meant to facilitate monetization?

I doubt you're going to generate enough interest to make people pay for it; Raqeem has all the disadvantages of Latinization while lacking all the benefits. If your main aim is to popularize it, I would suggest making the design Open Source and giving it away for free.

Shh.

Actually, though, it's somewhat unfair to describing it as having "all the disadvantages of Latinization while lacking all the benefits". It has, at least, the great advantage of avoiding Latinization; the letter forms are based on those of the Arabic script.

In fact, a while back, on this site, I actually described what was basically the same thing for the Hebrew alphabet - use the square script for "upper case" and the archaic style, similar to Phoenician, for lower-case with ascenders and descenders. I didn't propose it seriously as something that would fill a need, but instead merely to show that if it was ever felt that Hebrew needed upper- and lower- case, it was possible to have them without Latinization.

Kaled Mana said:

2- The download script can only work on one copy of Adobe illustrator on one computer.
3- This script does not work on portable versions of illustrator applications.

It's clear that monetization is intended.

While I would agree that a set of glyphs, intended to give the Arabic script upper- and lower- case, like the Latin script, without the need for initial, medial, final, and isolated forms of letters, is not likely to take the world of Arabic script users by storm - and much less so if it costs money to use it...

I think that's something this script's inventor must decide for himself. Perhaps he has a very specific use case in mind where monetization does make sense.

Since there is every reason to suspect this would go absolutely nowhere even if it were given away for free, there is hardly any urgency in convincing the script's creator of the error of his ways.

Christian Thalmann

John Savard said:

Actually, though, it's somewhat unfair to describing it as having "all the disadvantages of Latinization while lacking all the benefits". It has, at least, the great advantage of avoiding Latinization; the letter forms are based on those of the Arabic script.

Fair enough!

It's clear that monetization is intended.

Still, fonts can be monetized just as well as plugins, and are certainly easier to produce and use.

Since there is every reason to suspect this would go absolutely nowhere even if it were given away for free, there is hardly any urgency in convincing the script's creator of the error of his ways.

In theory, at least, it could help prevent unnecessary expenditure of money. In practice, I agree it's not likely to succeed.

In fact, a while back, on this site, I actually described what was basically the same thing for the Hebrew alphabet - use the square script for "upper case" and the archaic style, similar to Phoenician, for lower-case with ascenders and descenders. I didn't propose it seriously as something that would fill a need, but instead merely to show that if it was ever felt that Hebrew needed upper- and lower- case, it was possible to have them without Latinization.

That sounds like a worthwhile project to me. It's a playful yet historically motivated variation of the existing script, presumably legible to Hebrew readers without instruction, and presumably more lively than the default styles. I can certainly see design applications for something like that. Sort of how blackletters are still used in Latin despite being «archaic».
Do you have a link?

John Savard

Christian Thalmann said:

Do you have a link?

Unfortunately, no. A search turned up this discussion in which I took part where Schonfeld's version of Hebrew came up:

https://typedrawers.com/discussion/3395/latinized-greek/p1

But I didn't draw a new script, my illustration simply used the existing to Hebrew scripts to illustrate the notion.

Kaled Mana

Hello guys

Please don't fight because of RAQEEM

It great pleasure to present an overview of the problems facing the current Arabic drawing that many Arab intellectuals and linguists have talked about since the beginning of the last century. Some of them have called for replacing the Arabic letter with the Latin alphabet, this made all nationalists or radicals and fanatics bulwark against any development.The truth is that throughout the last century, no one has made any attempt to provide a solution, even if it has flaws.

Although this Typeface offers many solutions to the problems facing the classic Arabic calligraphy it did not come to remove it, but rather to add options and value to the Arabic language.

Some basic issues of classical Arabic calligraphy

1- The current Arabic script can only be read correctly unless by Arab linguists because it is written without diacritics.

2- Diacritics are not among the letters, but are attachments at the top and bottom

3- In the case of writing diacritics, they can only be read by a chameleon because the reader must go from right to left and during that move up and down (high cost).

These problems are only a small part of the problems of the current typeface. It is not possible to go deep into the details of grammar here, and the question remains whether this typeface was developed for the sake of linguists or the general public.

Some technical issues of classical Arabic calligraphy

1- The dominates oriental spirituality on the Arabic classical typeface, but make it lost some of the characteristics required in the digital age today, such as independence and free position.

2- Limited options in animation techniques.

3- Limited opportunities for typography.

4- Freezing creativity in drawing in the classic font due to links between letters (there is no dedicated Arabic font editor online).

Rights and social responsibility

1- This format will be available and free for government department and non-profit organizations and individuals (for personal, non-commercial use such as art, for example).

2- The parties that must pay for benefiting from this script are the commercial one.

Will this attempt succeed or fail?

This is not the appropriate question, but will Arabs and Muslims  whom use the classical Arabic calligraphy choose after a period of time whose shortness or length may be difficult to predict to adding the Raqeem typeface to the Arabic language or canceling everything and using the Latin typeface.

Tell me guys

Sorry for long texts

André G. Isaak

I must confess that I found most of the concerns you raised to be rather perplexing. In particular, I have no idea what any of the following mean:

2- Limited options in animation techniques.

3- Limited opportunities for typography.

4- Freezing creativity in drawing in the classic font due to links between letters (there is no dedicated Arabic font editor online).

But the very first concern you raised seems to involve some fundamental misunderstanding of how writing systems work:

1- The current Arabic script can only be read correctly unless by Arab linguists because it is written without diacritics.

I assume by 'Arab linguists' you actually mean 'native Arabic speakers'. But the main reason why Arabic is normally written without most diacritics is simply because most native speakers don't find them necessary. So the absence of these is hardly a bug.

Writing systems evolve to meet the needs of native readers, not of non-native learners. There is a common misconception that the ideal writing system should aim to accurately represent the pronunciation of the language, but such systems are few and far between. The reason for this is simply that representing the morphology of the language is at least as important as representing the phonology and over time writing systems tend to favour morphological consistency over phonological accuracy.

For a language like Arabic, that means that a good writing system will tend to draw attention to the consonantal roots, and this is why abjads which focus on consonants rather than vowels are prevalent among the Semitic and related languages but are rare elsewhere. These systems are simply well suited for Semitic.

When early Semitic scripts were adapted to Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin they developed into something else (alphabetic scripts), but that's because abjads, which are ideally suited for Semitic, are completely unsuited for Indo-European which has a very different morphological structure. So I'm not really clear on why you would want to devise some new script for Arabic which draws upon features from Latin, a script which evolved for languages which are structurally very different from Arabic.

Kaled Mana

André G. Isaak said:

I must confess that I found most of the concerns you raised to be rather perplexing. In particular, I have no idea what any of the following mean:

2- Limited options in animation techniques.

3- Limited opportunities for typography.

4- Freezing creativity in drawing in the classic font due to links between letters (there is no dedicated Arabic font editor online).

As an Arab graphic designer, I have a visual angle that focuses on the purpose of writing and modern techniques in visualization and movement. I see a lack in classical Arabic texts compared to those huge options for Latin or even Japanese font motion and effects in graphic styles, so I focus in this project on the motion and grammatical aspects altogether to be achieved The harmony between the Raqeem and the classic Arabic calligraphy between the past and the present, so we can easily transform between them.

André G. Isaak said:

But the very first concern you raised seems to involve some fundamental misunderstanding of how writing systems work:

1- The current Arabic script can only be read correctly unless by Arab linguists because it is written without diacritics.

I assume by 'Arab linguists' you actually mean 'native Arabic speakers'. But the main reason why Arabic is normally written without most diacritics is simply because most native speakers don't find them necessary. So the absence of these is hardly a bug.

I totally agree with you %100. the font is not bound by diacritics or the correct pronunciation (but not formal documents and regulations) this is what I mean when I talking about Arab linguists (Arabic grammar scholars) they do not read, but memorize the pronunciation, so their strictness towards any development that does not have justification.

With regard to Arabic calligraphy and its development. the history and ancient monuments that have been found in the Arabian Peninsula since the tenth century B.C. provide us with only one font, the Southern Musnad font, which is a font with high logic in the upper case and is not connected between its letters.

This font continued to be used sixty years after the advent of Islam, and some studies mention that it disappeared for reasons other than linguistic, literary, or artistic.

Note Musnad is the first font with has font family in history with 3 typefaces.

Kaled Mana

https://twitter.com/kaledm74/status/1435581178451570688/photo/1

Thomas Phinney

Aside from all the questions about benefits, or whether it is even a good idea, I have seen enough things going on in standards, font formats, and language support to be pretty sure that launching something like this and keeping it proprietary… will render the whole concept DOA (dead on arrival).

Keeping this stuff locked down the way you want would require an app-specific plug-in. But I don’t think that will sell.

Text is encoded in Unicode. The Unicode Consortium is not going to allocate permanent codepoints to a proprietary system. You really need that, in the long run.

I contrast this with something like Adlam, which has gotten traction and support… but only because it was not proprietary at all.

If you want to make money off of your work, the way to do that, which would also work better for getting traction, would be to get your work funded by a corporation or non-profit organization. But the writing system itself would have to be open. People could make either open source or proprietary fonts for it, but you would need at least some open source fonts, and a lot of open infrastructure, to get the whole thing off the ground.

Christian Thalmann

Although this Typeface offers many solutions to the problems facing the classic Arabic calligraphy it did not come to remove it, but rather to add options and value to the Arabic language.

If you mean to offer Raqeem as a supplement rather than a replacement for Arabic script, that might indeed make the project more realistic.

4- Freezing creativity in drawing in the classic font due to links between letters (there is no dedicated Arabic font editor online).

If you mean the fact that the Arabic script's apparent unwillingness to depart from its connected script nature, even for display purposes, that could be helped without completely reinventing the letters. I made up such a proposal with al-Fraqtūrah:

https://twitter.com/CatharsisFonts/status/713306107813302274

And I suppose al-Gharamūn counts as well, though it doesn't take itself seriously:

https://twitter.com/CatharsisFonts/status/704948047483162624

Simon Cozens

Khaled Hosny's Anti is also quite a fun display Arabic concept.



But there is a big, obvious reason why you won't see radical orthographic changes to the Arabic script - 114 reasons, in fact...

Kaled Mana

Thomas Phinney said:

Keeping this stuff locked down the way you want would require an app-specific plug-in. But I don’t think that will sell.

Actually, the purpose of the script is to sell it to commercial entities, because it will be free for individuals or non-profit entities.

Thomas Phinney said:

If you want to make money off of your work, the way to do that, which would also work better for getting traction, would be to get your work funded by a corporation or non-profit organization. But the writing system itself would have to be open. People could make either open source or proprietary fonts for it, but you would need at least some open source fonts, and a lot of open infrastructure, to get the whole thing off the ground.

It is great to have a sponsor or investor, that will shorten the time and effort, and it is a strengthening factor for the project .I agree with you it will be open sources and many ideas moving around but no enough time, I believe that it is the developers who will to take this project to limits.

John Savard

Kaled Mana said:

As an Arab graphic designer, I have a visual angle that focuses on the purpose of writing and modern techniques in visualization and movement. I see a lack in classical Arabic texts compared to those huge options for Latin or even Japanese font motion and effects in graphic styles, so I focus in this project on the motion and grammatical aspects altogether to be achieved The harmony between the Raqeem and the classic Arabic calligraphy between the past and the present, so we can easily transform between them.

While I am highly skeptical of your project, I do agree that this is a valid concern. I've seen where designers took the Korean script, and matched it stylistically to Old English or Fraktur for effect.

While it may be possible to give Arabic stylistic diversity with changes less radical than Raqeem, this is still a situation that can be seen. But will it be generally percieved as enough of an issue to get people to be willing to modify their reading habits?

Kaled Mana

Christian Thalmann said:

If you mean to offer Raqeem as a supplement rather than a replacement for Arabic script, that might indeed make the project more realistic.

Ya, nobody can move the classic Arabic typeface out of Arabic culture it is old and huge history.

Christian Thalmann said:

If you mean the fact that the Arabic script's apparent unwillingness to depart from its connected script nature, even for display purposes, that could be helped without completely reinventing the letters. I made up such a proposal with al-

I think the weakness of shape's uniqueness of the classic Arabic typeface leaves us in silence.

Kaled Mana

Simon Cozens said:

But there is a big, obvious reason why you won't see radical orthographic changes to the Arabic script - 114 reasons, in fact...

Would you please clarify that?

Kaled Mana

John Savard said:

While I am highly skeptical of your project, I do agree that this is a valid concern. I've seen where designers took the Korean script, and matched it stylistically to Old English or Fraktur for effect.

Ok, we have one.

John Savard said:

While it may be possible to give Arabic stylistic diversity with changes less radical than Raqeem, this is still a situation that can be seen. But will it be generally percieved as enough of an issue to get people to be willing to modify their reading habits?

The radical changes are made by the classic Arabic font, not by Raqeem cause the classic Arabic font has 28 letters only 5 of the group is unique but the rest can be divided into 10 groups it is similar to each other from two to four cases for one group

1- Beh - Teh - Tha - Noon

2- Jeem - Hah - Khah

3- Lam - Kaf

4- Feh - Qaf

5- Dal - Thal

6- Reh - Zain

7- Seen - Sheen

8- Sad - Dad

9- Ain - Ghain

10- Tah - Zah

the unique letters are (Alef - Waw - Yeh - Ha - Meem) OF 28  and group 1 that include 4 letters will have more root changes then other groups but if you focus on Raqeem Teh top part you can see the shape of Teh isolated in classic Arabic typeface.

Nobody can develop a new typeface from scratch without lean on previous experience unless he does not expect someone will use it, so I admit I wasn't the one who decided the choices in all ideas flows, it just goes with the river sometimes.