Change default Arabic font.

I was able to achieve what I wanted. A friend of mine had Fontlab studio, and I was able to Modify the Tahoma and Tahoma Bold fonts into AAATahoma and AAATahoma Bold. I had to rename the PostScript name, full name, family and a bunch of other names and now OS X recognises it as a totally different font and there is no conflict with the original Tahoma and Tahoma Bold fonts. I named the files to AAATahoma so that they become the first fonts that support Arabic, like I said earlier OS X resolves to the first font that supports Arabic when Geeza Pro is disabled, and it does that alphabetically.

After renaming the files all I had to do was add them to Font Book and disable Geeza Pro which is the default Arabic font for OS X.

I have tested it، and I haven't had any issues, it works with Safari, Mail, Textedit، Wordpress, chrome, twitter, Growl, Spotlight، Finder, Dashboard, pretty much every app that I have tried so far.

I don't know if it is legal to modify the name of the fonts, but other than the name I haven't modified anything else, like the copyright information, the owner deisgner etc. and I am only using it for personal use.

If you would like to have the font files leave a post and I will send you a download link.

adem

Screenshot of Font Book showing both fonts.

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Thanks Tom, I tested Tahoma in WriteRoom and you are right Tahoma is not recognized, only TextEdit seems to recognize this font. Another font that I like is Arial Unicode MS which works in WriteRoom and I just tested it by disabling Geeza and all the other Arabic fonts above it Arial unicode, and OS X is using it as the default font in Twitter, Stickies, spotlight, chrome, etc. which means its supported by Mac.

So, now I will just have to rename Arial Unicode MS into something like AAArial and that would do the trick. I checked out FontForge but its only offered as source and I am not really that experienced at compiling. FontLab, they probably have some Trial and since I only need to use it once I met get away with that, but which product is it?

I don't mind any other windows or Ubuntu apps either. and thanks again.

yes, the main reason I want to change the font is becuase I don't like Geeza Pro, its like Times New Roman for Arabic.

Ya its a simple job to change the font everytime I want to type in Arabic, but this is something that I will be doing every single time on each and every app that I use, so if there is a solution to change the default font, why not use it. And for some apps like Twitter or Chrome, I dont have the option to change the font, hence my only option is to change the default font.

ok, they pretty much all look the same, but still how do I get one of these fonts to become the default font?

so far I can only think of the methond in the first post i.e. renaming the font's PostScript name, full name, and family, so that OS X will recognise it as a new font.

So which program can do that, other than FontForge, and if fontlab has a trial version which product do I have to download.

Even Microsoft's Word 2011 doesn't display the letters correctly.

another thing, I wonder if this is a Lion only feature? would be interesting if someone could test it on 10.5 or 10.6 too.

Tom,

do you know if there is a free alternative to Fontlab that could rename font files?

Tom Gewecke wrote:

Which feature are you referring to -- the ability to change the default font by renaming?

ya, the feature by which OS X automatically resolves to the next available Arabic font when the default Geeza Pro is disabled.

I would just like to report back on what I have experienced so far.

As you know I was able to change the default font and everything has been working fine, however I have noticed that with the Twitter app, whenever there are lots of Arabic tweets to load, the fontd process in activity monitor jumps to 98% CPU for a few seconds and then goes down to 0%, it has also become a bit unresponsice and I am seeing the spinning ball of death more often. I am also using Yorufukurou, another twitter app and haven't had an issue with it either, seems like its only a problem with the way the official Twitter app works. When I reverted back to Geeza Pro as my default font, Twitter app became resposive again.

Other than twitter all the apps seem to work fine and I haven't had an issue with any of them.

yes you are right, the letters are disconnected. And thats the case with all the Arabic fonts that I have, excpet those that are made by Apple.

I dont know alot about fonts, but if you do, do you know whats the difference between Apple's Arabic fonts and say Tahoma or Arial? and if there is a way to make them compatible via either conversion or something else.