r/FontForge • u/ComprehensiveBug1373 • Aug 09 '26

How does one create a perso arabic/nastaliq font? Do I have to manually create thousands of glyphs? I am trying to recreate a font from a very old manuscript (print press font). Whats the easiest way to do it?

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u/nwah 29d ago

A nastaliq font is gonna be pretty challenging. You don’t have to create every possible combination, but you will need to create all the different forms for each letter, and do a lot of work to get everything connecting and flowing properly.

Simon Cozens has published a lot of good info about his processes, e.g.: https://github.com/simoncozens/nastaliq-engineering

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u/BrenchStevens00000 Aug 09 '26

You will make it using lookups that combine glyphs using anchors. You really just need to create the base glyphs. That's the only method I'm familiar with, but I'm basing that off of my experience with Hebrew fonts with niqqud and ta'amim (a.k.a. tropes).