Thread:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Nastaliq font for Urdu/reply (4)

This all requires some further clarification:


 * At a unicode level, this all uses arabic text (as far as I'm able to tell, and I'm not sure if there are differences in shaping)
 * Nastaliq is the traditional writing style of Urdu language.
 * Due to the availability of Naskh scripts (which are also easier to render due to more consistent line height), it has become more common for urdu to be represented in naskh in digital media.
 * This is considered to be undesirable however.
 * There is no known free nastaliq font.
 * There are however nastaliq fonts available on Windows 8, but since they share the same script, they apparently don't really get easily selected by the font systems.
 * There is a desire to make https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Script/Nastaliq unneeded, but this is a requirement that ULS cannot fulfill because of the above reasons

So some points to address:
 * 1) A free Nastaliq font is desirable and
 * 2) En.wp doesn't really know what the Urdu wikipedia community thinks of this, it might be useful to figure that out.
 * 3) A temporary solution might be to make it possible to redefine system font styles in a certain language. So you could have in the font drop down for urdu:
 * 4) nastaliq system
 * 5) NafeesWeb
 * 6) system default

There is a nice article on Nastaliq typesetting here