Problem with Arabic ligatures in MS Word 2019

realAmrIsmail

First, I'm running office on windows 10 and I have a problem with Arabic ligatures... apparently MS word automatically uses standard and contextual ligatures even when I turn ligature off. Although  ligatures are working very well in English!
Anyone know how I can turn ligature off entirely!

Example:


with all the ligature off it is still showing ligatures.

while it should read like this:


Thanks in Advance! I really need a solution for this!

John Hudson

There are two aspects to this:

1. How a font maker assigns individual ligatures to different OpenType Layout features: rlig, liga, dlig, and clig.

2. How an application interacts with the shaping engine that is responsible for Arabic script layout and what options it provides to users in terms of activating or deactivating OTL features used by that shaping engine.

With regard to the first of these, some font makers may opt to include in the Requied Ligatures rlig feature ligatures that they consider preferable to be always active in the design, or may simply put all ligatures into that feature. Other font makers may split the ligatures across different features depending whether they want them to be always active, to be active most of the time (on by default, but able to be turned off), or to be active some of the time (off by default, but able to be turned on).

Some software, however, may not provide user controls to deactivate the Standard Ligature (liga) feature for specific scripts. This is because they rely on the shaping engine to handle the layout for those scripts, and may not plug their user interface controls into that shaping engine. So, for example, the user interface control that disables the liga feature in Latin fonts may not be plugged into the shaping engine that handles Arabic text.

So there a number of factors that could be affecting what you see in Word, at both the font and app level.

AzizMostafa AzizAli

RealAmrIsmail : > Anyone knows how I can turn ligature off entirely!

@ Your given example shows two (2) drawbacks: bad ligatures & bad kerning.

So, why turn ligature off entirely?! Is not the beauty of Arabic script lies in ligatures?!

Arabic ligatures can be turned off by replacing them with zero-width joiners between their individual components. But have you thought of the bad kerning?!

Fly high Arabic Fonts @ All the Best for All with Flowers

Thomas Phinney

AzizMostafa AzizAli said:

Arabic ligatures can be turned off by replacing them with zero-width joiners between their individual components.

I am sure Aziz meant zero-width non-joiners! U+200C

John Hudson

I am sure Aziz meant zero-width non-joiners! U+200C

No, he did mean ZWJ. In Arabic, ZWNJ between normally joining letters will force their disconnected (isol, fina, init) forms. ZWJ will allow the standard joining forms but will interrupt ligature formation. 

Thomas Phinney

Aha! Thanks. I assumed it was a typo, but instead it was a valuable learning experience!

realAmrIsmail

Well Thank you All for this, really really appreciate it