OS X Update: check here.
The Jaghbub font package
This is a set of fonts for use in Middle Eastern languages transliterated to the Latin script. They have the most common diacritics used in transliteration of Arabic and Persian in various transliteration / transcription formats. The fonts are modifications of standard Times, Helvetica and Palatino, and will print on any printer in a quality similar to those fonts.
A sample of the Jaghbub font:
There are three TrueType fonts in the normal range of Roman, Bold, Italics and BoldItalics. They are:
- Jaghbub Unicode (JaghbUni), which is based on Times
- Koufra Unicode (KoufrUni), which is based on Palatino
- Bairut Unicode (BairUni), which is based on Helvetica.
In the following the complete set is described as the "Jaghbub package". The three fonts share the same characters, so that a text written in one of them can be changed to any other of the three with all diacritics intact.
The font package follows the standard called Unicode. This is a standard shared with Windows, so it makes exchanging documents with Windows users easy, and they can also be mixed with other Unicode fonts. The fonts can be used in all Mac OS X programs that support Unicode, such as Microsoft Word & Office, NisusWriter, Mail, TextEdit, and most other current programs.
Along with the font package follows a "keyboard layout" that allows you to type transliteration in a relatively logical fashion (type "alt-s" to get s with dot under, "alt-a" for a with line above, etc.) It is not essential for using the fonts, but makes it more convenient.
Downloads
The fonts are packaged in the following files:- Jaghbub Unicode Package : The fonts JaghbUni, KoufrUni and BairUni with the American Diacs keyboard layout. The fonts are packed in suitcases for Macintosh users.
- Jaghbub additional keyboards etc. : More keyboard layouts for European countries, and some other additional files.
- Jaghbub Unicode
for Windows. The same three fonts as above,
but suited to installation on Windows machines.
Installation
The files are packed as .zip files, and should open directly into a folder.
Install the fonts using either FontBook or by placing them in their
appropriate Fonts folder.
All the keyboard layouts you wish to install (with extensions ".keylayout"
and ".icns) go into the Keyboard Layouts folder inside your Libraries
folder (you must log off and on again, then go to International, to activate
the keyboards).
For more details, see the ReadMe files of each package.
(-- Some Word users have reported problems with bold and italic characters not appearing, due to a bug in Word. For those, installing the "Windows" version, which works fine also on current Macs, seems to solve the problem.)
What the package contains:
The fonts contain these characters:
- The standard A-Z character set and normal European diacritics, unchanged from the origin font. Thus these fonts may be used for normal non-tranliteration texts as well.
- SDTHZ with dot under (all in upper and lower case)
- DT with line under
- G with dot above
- GSCZ with caron (small v above)
- Yumushak G (= g with breve; curve above)
- H with curly line below (for German translit. of kh)
- AIUEO with macron (line above)
- Dotless i / Dotted I
- Y with circonflex
- Hamza
- 'Ain
- Schwa (upside-down e)
- Dot below
- Dot above (low position for lower case, high for upper case letters)
- Macron (low / high)
- Non-width accent aigu / grave (low / high)
- Caron
- Cedille
- Two dots below
- Line under
| JaghbUni also has k/dot under, and hooked b, d and k for Hausa-Fulani. They contain the full Latin1 character set. |
The "combining diacritics" are simply characters without spacing. In Microsoft Word and some other programs, their placement under / above another character will be approximate and often off-centre. There, it is thus advisable to use the complete characters above for optimal quality. NisusWriter, TextEdit and many other programs will however combine these characters more appropriately than Word.
(See also the enclosed table showing the Jaghbub diacritics with the Arabic characters they may correspond to.)
These fonts were originally made for Macintosh, but you will also find
a Windows version. It is the same font, but Mac users prefer fonts in a "suitcase" format Windows does not understand, so Windows users should download the Windows version, where each font is in a PC .ttf format. For convenient typing of transliteration, Windows users should find a method to their liking; see a separate page on this that includes some information relevant to this:
Typing diacritic characters
Classic Jaghbub
Some older programmes cannot use modern Unicode fonts, thus e.g.
versions of Microsoft Word older than 2004. For these, there exist older
pre-Unicode versions of these fonts, see the separate web page for these:
Jaghbub Classic
These fonts are provided free from all restrictions in both directions: anyone may use them to whatever purpose s/he wants (short of selling them!), and I take no responsibilty for them -- they are presented "as is".
Caveats and restrictions
| Notice that I say the fonts are "based" on Times etc. They are in print
quality identical to their origin fonts, within the limits of the font
generation programs. Very discerning eyes may notice that one font is marginally
thicker, or spaced just a bit tighter or looser than the origin font. An
absolute copy is probably today impossible, but the difference between
Jaghbub and Times are of the same order as the difference between Times
and Times New Roman. On the whole, the diacritic and origin fonts may thus
be used interchangeably.
One difference I have noticed, is that Word, in particular, gives less line spacing for these fonts than for the original versions. This is not in the font file, the leading there is set to be identical to the original fonts, but something Word does. If you are going to mix these fonts and the originals in Word, you should be aware of this and set the line spacing manually. Helvetica does not have a separate italic style, only boldface, thus Bairut and BairUni are only Roman and Bold. The styles of the three fonts are "merged", so that only the basic font name appear in the Fonts menu, not "Jaghbub Italics" etc. Choosing the Italic style in your word processor will select the italics printer font (if your program supports this). Older versions of StuffIt Expander have problems with zip files. If you find e.g. that the folder you downloaded appears to be empty, upgrade StuffIt Expander to version 9 or higher. What do the names mean? I made these fonts originally for my own use, when I was writing on the Sanusiyya brotherhood. Mac fonts often use city names, and the Sanusi capital was the oasis of Jaghbub in Libya; later the brotherhood moved to Kufra (a font name must have six letters, so "Koufra"). Why Helvetica became Bairut? Figure it out! Postscript files These fonts are made in TrueType, which is now standard for Macintosh OS. If you must for some reason have PostScript versions, contact me with details. |
Enjoy.