armeen نوشته است:[نمایش]behanm, here is my question... i tested this on a brand new mac, before removing arial, times new roman and tahoma, irmug in safari didn't show correctly however bbcperian did? it seems that bbc persian is using hevetica at their default font
OK here's what I understand how it works. It may not be exact because I myself encountered some descripency but it should be pretty close to the following:
In safari Preferences, the default font is Helvetica if it is not modified by user.
This doesn't mean that every web-pages shows up with Helvetica font face. It means that it will show up with Helvetica if one of the two conditions is met:
1- The web-page doesn't have a pre-defined font.
2- The web-page does have a pre-defined font but that font is not available to the computer of user (that's what we do by removing MS fonts)
Font selection (Helvetica or otherwise) doesn't override pre-defined selection of web-page and rightly so. You would like to see the page as it was intended by page designers, unless the fonts used in that design are not available to you or they are available to you but they don't work properly on your AAT environment.
For Roman language users, the second situation never comes up because even if a Roman font doesn't have any AAT at all, it will show the text correctly. There is no initial, medial and final form involved so there is no need for sophisticated AAT features. In Roman languages AAT features (or OT for that matter) are only used for a very sophisticated professional typesetting. Zapfino has it. Helvetica also has it for some minor substitutions and ligatures and refinements. But AAT is not required for having a readable Roman text.
So the problem is essentially with Arabic script languages that absolutely need AAT fonts on Safari and since nobody else (Roman users) is complaining, they are so slow to correct this problem (or even maybe to understand it).
What we need in Safari, is a separate font selection for Arabic script (or rtl in general) WITH the ability to OVERRIDE pre-selected fonts in web-pages. The override should not be active at all time. You still want to give priority to pre-defined font of web designer if it would work fine on your Safari. But let's say you need an icon like the 'bug' (of bug report) on the menu bar of Safari for 'Arabic Override' so that if the page is not rendered correctly, you click on that icon and your default RTL font chosen in Safari Preferences will take over... of course that would be an AAT font that you choose as Arabic default in Preferences and it will show the text correctly.
I think we should go to Apple with a concrete suggestion like the one I just mentioned. I don't think they understand the issue of 'override' in our special situation.
Now having this process in Safari in mind, and that the font selected in Safari Preferences does NOT override pre-defined fonts of web-pages (and it shouldn't), I go back to your question and explain it one at the time:
Since you didn't remove MS fonts, and that these fonts are pre-defined in those web-pages but they don't have AAT, you get broken Farsi with those fonts.
As for BBC Persian, it doesn't have pre-defined font (as opposed to BBC Arabic) or there is a possibility that it's defined but doesn't match to any of your fonts. And now something very interesting takes place:
Your default in Safari is Helvetica and Safari select Helvetica for Persian BBC. That is what you see in TextEdit pasted text. But Helvetica doesn't have any Arabic character!... so this time, it is OS that takes over (it has nothing to do with Safari) and it supplies the missing characters in Helvetica from its default system font for Arabic... which is Geeza Pro.
So what you actually see in BBC Persian is OS doing but the default font assigned to that page which is Helvetica is Safari doing.
As for IRMUG showing broken, this is a black eye for us! So far Ali didn't have any other option but choosing Tahoma as defined font for IRMUG and of-course you had non-AAT Tahoma in your computer!
توسط رضاافشار » 01 فوریه 2006, 16:15 
