[tex-live] Problems with Nafees fonts

[Khaled Hosny]

On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 02:18:02PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> 2011/8/31 Jonathan Kew <jfkthame at googlemail.com>:
> > On 31 Aug 2011, at 12:51, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> >
> >> 2011/8/31 Akira Kakuto <kakuto at fuk.kindai.ac.jp>:
> >>>> Well obviously xdvipdfmx can't find the font. I get the same error
> >>>> message if I first generate the xdv, then remove the font, and then
> >>>> call xdvipdfmx.
> >>>
> >>> Here (windows) xdvipdfmx can find the font by
> >>> \setmainfont[Script=Arabic]{Nafees Nastaleeq}:
> >>>
> >> Thank you for the test, I removed bidi but I still get the same error.
> >> Thus is seems to be an OS specific problem, maybe in XeTeX, maybe in
> >> fontspec, maybe in xdvipdfmx (I cannot find a contact to an author of
> >> xdvipdfmx). I have placed all relevant mails, the source file and the
> >> log file at
> >> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/NafeesBug/
> >>
> >> I can try it on i386 in Fedora 13 and if needed, I can build TL
> >> binaries from svn repository, if you modify the sources and if it
> >> helps testing.
> >
> > My guess is that this is related to fontconfig behavior, and some kind of oddity or mismatch in the font's name table.
> >
> > What version of fontconfig is present on your machine? If it's not fairly up-to-date, it might be worth trying a more recent one.
> >
> Finally I tried on Fedora 13 with newer fontconfig and it works.
> Unfortunatelly, I cannot afford to upgrade Linux on other computers
> and compilation fo the latest fontconfig from the git sources may be
> difficult or even impossible with libraries from RPM's, so it seems I
> will have to live without the Nafees fonts :-(
> SIL Scheherazade is a beautiful font containing Urdu characters but I
> need Nastaleeq style...

Almost all Nafees fonts have buggy font names, e.g. many of them have
the "preferred family" set to "Nafees" and this confuses fontconfig. So
if you are installed other Nafees fonts, try removing them or fix the
name using FontForge or a similar tool.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Egyptian
 Arab