Astrolabe — A Kufic typeface inspired by old sciences
Astrolabe is a Kufic typeface inspired by Arabic inscription on old scientific instruments like Astrolabes and Quadrants. The main source of inspiration is quadrants made by Shams al‐Din al-Mizzī (690–750 AH / 1291–1349 CE), like the one in Cairo Museum of Islamic Art, and another one in The The British Museum.
Astrolabe is a free, open-source project, and anyone is welcome to use and modify it under the terms of version 3 of GNU Affero General Public License.
Character set
Astrolabe supports Arabic languages, with Arabic digits and punctuation designed to match the spirit of Astrolabe letters.
Contextual alternates
Astrolabe contains contextual alternates that are enabled automatically, like high middle beh tooth in sequences of three or more beh-like letters, or wider variants of some letters to avoid dot clash, or shallower versions of letters with descenders where necessary:
Stylistic sets
It also includes an number of stylistic sets that can be enabled manually for richer designs:
ss01— Dot-less Letter Forms- Losses the dots of dotted letters like beh, teh, etc.
ss02— Alternate isolated/final “hah”- Alternate isolated and final hah-like letters (hah, khah, jeem) with straight ending and no descender. This resembles the form of jeem used in scientific and mathematical contexts.
ss03— Alternate medial/final “ain”- Alternate medial and final ain and ghain with a rounded instead of flaring ending.
ss04— Alternate medial/final “feh”- Alternate, circular, medial feh and qaf, and final feh.
ss05— Alternate isolated/final “lam”- Alternate isolated and final lam without a descender.
ss06— Alternate isolated/final “meem”- Alternate, longer, isolated and final meem.
ss07— Alternate isolated “yeh”- Alternate, returning, isolated yeh.
Tabular figures
Astrolabe supports also tabular figures feature (tnum) for uses where fixed width digits are more appropriate, like tables:
Elongation
Astrolabe is a variable font with an elongation axis, Mashq (MSHQ), to elongate letters that can be elongated in Kufic, which are dal, tah, kaf, and sad, as well as beh, and feh (only in their initial and medial positions). These letters can expand or shrink as needed. This can be used to justify text without expanding the space between words.
In this example, there is a comparison between justifying text with spaces without elongation, as well as using elongation, with several variations in the use of elongations in attempt to achieve more balanced paragraph color:
The places of elongation is highlighted below, the the Mashq axis values of each line next to it:
This is another example of use of elongation to balance the text:
