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Comment by mirzmaster | Hacker News Reader

Still no Nastaliq [1] for Urdu and Persian script. There's a great piece on Medium [2] about the death of the Urdu script at the hands of the more structured Arabic Naskh font.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasta%CA%BFl%C4%ABq_script

[2] https://medium.com/@eteraz/the-death-of-the-urdu-script-9ce9...

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Could you file a bug at https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list ? This is a great place for @eteraz to get involved.

Since nobody did it, I filed a bug at https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/detail?id=39 through my phone.

the title is messed up, but I hope the message is clear.

Since this article is still on the front page of HN, let me paste the response: “We are working on a Noto Nastaliq as well. So stay tuned.”

I saw the article before and I too was deeply moved by it, but don't you think you could word this better so as not to make it sound so blasé? "Pah, no nastaliq, useless!" -- this is an amazing project.

+1. It sounds incredibly condescending the way it's written right now. Like the omission of Nastaliq is a great tragedy and Google should be deeply ashamed.

> Like the omission of Nastaliq is a great tragedy and Google should be deeply ashamed.

Well, the heading says «Beautiful and free fonts for all languages» and the OP noticed that it fails to include at least one important script/language combination.

A. I wouldn't exactly call an almost-dead not-incredibly-commonly-used script "important". Especially when others, which are available on Noto, are more widely used.

B. There's much better ways of phrasing the request than the way it was written.

A. incorrect. I have just one word for you - Bollywood [1] [2]

[1] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=bollywood+urdu&safe=off&cl...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_and_Urdu_wedding_songs

First of all, I wouldn't call one specific use case proving that it isn't almost dead. Just because it's being used in one case, for Bollywood wedding songs, does not mean it isn't "almost dead". Secondly, it was by the OPs own admission that the language is dying.

true - except when that one usecase is a billion people. I'm just pointing out that there is a skewed worldview of asian countries.

My previous comment was in jest, but was fairly accurate in its portrayal of impact.

a far more cut and dry statistic is this [1] and this [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_India_by_Urdu_speaker... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Jang

You can find a nice Nastaliq font at http://urdu.ca/1 (direct link: http://urdu.ca/UrduFonts.zip). More are available at http://www.urdujahan.com/font.html. You will want to find out how they are licensed before using them in a commercial capacity.

Big thanks to Google for this effort...

But true, no Nastaliq (yet). Sadly not even mentioned as "unsupported".

The Urdu font they currently have there is not too bad. I won't mind reading a passage in this font.

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