Likewise, explicit ligatures are also encoded in the PRESENTATION blocks. For compatibility with existing standards, Unicode also defined codepoints with explicit positions for most letters (ARABIC PRESENTATION FORMS-A & -B), although use of these characters is discouraged. It is up to the font to show the letter with the proper appearance. Arabic codepoints in the U+0600 - U+06FF range represent all of the letters without regard to their position. Since Arabic script is cursive, the appearance of a letter changes depending on its context/position: isolated, initial (joined on the left), medial (joined on both sides), and final (joined on the right). Numerals vary by language and Unicode has set aside two ranges for Arabic script numbers: 'Arabic-Indic digits' (U+0660 - U+0669) for use with the Arabic language and 'Eastern Arabic-Indic digits' (U+06F0 - U+06F9) for use with all other languages that employ Arabic script. Specific font pages are provided for those that differ significantly: Kurdish, Pashto, Persian, Sindhi, Uighur, and Urdu.Īrabic script is written from right-to-left but numbers are written from left-to-right. Some of these languages employ additional or modified letters. Over the centuries it has been adapted to write a large number of other languages. Īrabic script is a cursive writing system used for the Arabic language.
WAZU JAPAN's Gallery of Unicode Fonts Arabic.
