Amiri (typeface)

Amiri (Arabic: أميري‎) is a naskh-based typeface for Arabic script designed by Dr. Khaled Hosny.[1][2] Beta released December 2011.[1] As of October 22, 2019, it is hosted on 67,000 websites, and is served by the Google Fonts API approximately 74.8 million times per week.[3]

Amiri
أميري
CategoryNaskh
Designer(s)Dr. Khaled Hosny
FoundryAlif Type
Date createdMay, 2009
Date releasedDecember, 2011
Characters
Glyphs6000+
LicenseOFL
Websiteamirifont.org
Latest release version0.113
Latest release date2 June, 2020

Inspiration

The Amiri typeface draws inspiration from a naskh typeface pioneered by the Bulaq Press (مطبعة بولاق), also called al-Mataabi' al-Amiriya (المطابع الأميرية), in 1905.[1]

On the 1905 typeface and of challenges of digitizing Arabic script,[4] Dr. Hosny wrote: "One of the most novel features of the Bulaq typeface is maintaining the æsthetics of Naskh calligraphy while meeting the requirements (and limitations) of typesetting, a balance that is not easily achieved."

The Amiri project was supported by Google Web Fonts,[5] TeX Users Group,[6] and donations from users.[1]

Features

Amiri was released under the SIL Open Font License.[1]

The typeface itself has four styles: regular, bold, slanted, bold slanted, and two companions for Koranic typesetting: Amiri Quran and Amiri Quran Colored. All of which are available in TrueType outlines and OpenType format.

The Amiri font makes extensive use of OpenType features to produce automatic positionings and substitutions, including wide varieties of contextual forms, ligatures and kerning to the Arabic letters and the verse number of āyah, and offers several optional features including character variants for specific letters and text figures for Arabic digits.[7]

The Amiri font itself was published and developed exclusively with free software, including FontForge, Inkscape, Python and VIM.[1]

References
  1. Hosny, Khaled (2012). "The Amiri typeface" (PDF). TUGBoat. 33: 12.
  2. "مشروع الخط الأميري :: Amiri Font Project". www.amirifont.org. Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  3. "Google Fonts: Amiri". Google Fonts. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  4. "Modernizing Arabic Type for a Digital Audience - Library". Google Design. Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  5. "Google Fonts". Google Fonts. Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  6. "CTAN: Package amiri". ctan.org. Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  7. "amiri/Documentation-Arabic.pdf at master" (PDF). GitHub. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
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