[Feature Request] More Sophisticated Persian Font

[Xashyar]

• I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

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Bug description

-The Current Arabic/Persian Font is Really Awful to Read.

Suggestion

-"Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif As Used by Twitter Which Looks Much Better!

Screenshots

Roboto, "Helvetica Neue" (Signal)

"Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif (Twitter)

Platform info

Signal version:
1.16.1-beta.1

Operating System:
Windows 10

[Xashyar]

@scottnonnenberg-signal
Hi!

Does this help with anything?

"For example, the Arabic script, when used for Persian and Urdu, exhibits significant and systematic differences in letterforms, as does Cyrillic..."

from W3 Article: CSS Fonts Module Level 3
also: Discussion on GitHub

PS: should I follow this on the community?

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

I guess I'm confused about what you're actually suggesting. It's highly unlikely that we'll change our fonts to have 'Segoe UI' as the first font instead of 'Roboto.' So perhaps you could tell us exactly what the change should be?

[Xashyar]

@scottnonnenberg-signal
According to this stackoverflow topic the only workaround is to use the <span> attribute:

It is not possible to set different fonts for different languages without distinguishing pieces of text by language at the markup level. You would normally use <span> tags with a class attribute or a lang attribute or both. The lang attribute is the logical choice, whereas styling works somewhat more reliably when using class (since class selectors are supported by all CSS-enabled browsers).

I also just checked a Wikipedia Page which uses mixed fonts:
<span dir="rtl" lang="fa">شاهنامه</span>

Interestingly Github (also Signal-Android) uses the correct font for Farsi (شاهنامه), but not for Arabic..!

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@Xashyar There's no differing font shown in your wikipedia example. Anyway, given that we have multiple fonts specified, in order, is there a place we could put your better font that wouldn't interfere with normal operation? Like 'Roboto', 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica', etc.? Essentially: is Roboto the font that doesn't work well in Farsi/Arabic or is it the failover to Helvetica?

[Xashyar]

There's no differing font shown in your wikipedia example.

You mean that this <span dir="rtl" lang="fa">شاهنامه</span> tag is useless?
Just by typing outside of this span the font goes back to Arabic.

'Roboto', 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica'

I just tried every possible permutations of these three and the only way that it works without messing with the Latin parts of the UI is by putting Roboto first and Segoe second, exactly in the order u've mentioned.
Although line spacing becomes the next issue (characters colliding) as I have illustrated in the picture below:

The Text (from Signal's Arabic Wikipedia):

سيجنال (بالإنجليزية: Signal) هو تطبيق للاتصال المشفر لنظامي تشغيل أندرويد وآي أو إس. وتتوفر منه إصدارات لسطح المكتب لنظم تشغيل جنو/لينكس وويندوز وماك أو إس. يستخدم التطبيق الإنترنت لإرسال رسائل من فرد لفرد أو لإرسال رسائل جماعية، ويمكن أن تتضمن هذه الرسائل ملفات وملاحظات صوتية وصورًا ومقاطع فيديو، كما يمكن أن يُستخدم التطبيق لإجراء مكالمات فيديو ومكالمات صوتية.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

tag is useless

No, I mean that it doesn't change the font, but it does change some sort of other language handling.

Although line spacing becomes the next issue (characters colliding) as I have illustrated in the picture below:

Can you be more specific? Is it that the Signal screenshot isn't attaching the characters together like in the Wikipedia screenshot?

For an issue like this, it might be best if your prepared a pull request, and we can all go test the changes to make sure they work well.

[Xashyar]

Can you be more specific? Is it that the Signal screenshot isn't attaching the characters together like in the Wikipedia screenshot?

Yeah, it's not a screenshot, I just pasted in the Arabic text from Wikipedia, and Github handles Line Spacing nicely, i.e. characters do not collide with the below or above line (I meant this with the blue mark).

For an issue like this, it might be best if your prepared a pull request, and we can all go test the changes to make sure they work well.

Sure thing! haven't done any pulls yet, will do this next time.

[Ali-Se]

I guess I'm confused about what you're actually suggesting. It's highly unlikely that we'll change our fonts to have 'Segoe UI' as the first font instead of 'Roboto.' So perhaps you could tell us exactly what the change should be?

If you can read Arabic text, I think you would not say that, The Arabic text in Arial is really Awful, very Awful, not easy to read, has bad spacing, and have lot of similar letter shapes.

Please put it as a second option Roboto, Segoe UI, ...

[zareshahi]

I suggest the Vazir font (that is open source and free) like telegram was chosen this font for their desktop client application

another beautiful and awesome font is Estedad

@scottnonnenberg-signal

[mohammadrafigh]

I suggest Vazir too. Also as another suggestion I think it would be great to have an option in preferences that lets advanced users add custom styles like how Zulip and some other collaboration tools allow this. Persian and Arabic with Arial in a 15inches (1920x1080) monitor are not readable at all.