Farsi symbol named "سریاء"

[davelab6]

A user wrote internally in August 2021 that,

We have a Farsi symbol named "سریاء" and that's a small "ی" that goes on top of "ه". Thankfully Google has added this symbol to its keyboard, but Android and all Google fonts show it wrong. They show it as the Arabic "همزه", that is "هٔ".

Bad:

Good:

I guess there should (a) be a reproduction and fix in Noto Arabic fonts and (b) a FB check for this?

[simoncozens]

Thanks for this report!

(a) I have fixed this in Noto Naskh, Sans and Kufi Arabic fonts:

(c) For languages we need to stop saying "Fontbakery check" and start saying "shaperglot check". :-) But yes, there should be, I will add one.

[khaledhosny]

I think this issue need to be investigated further. The mark in question is U+0654 Arabic Hamza Above, which is obviously a hamza!

What the original report might have intended is that a special style of hamza is preferred/required here, which I guess is something like the one in the middle of the kaf below (here it is originally a mini kaf, ڪ, but in sometyles of Arabic calligraphy hamza look the same):

[simoncozens]

Before:

Font does not fully support language 'fa_Arab'
 * FAIL: in Farsi, "saria heh" should use a small yeh above, not hamza; both buffers returned uni0654=0@126,-68+0|uni0647=0+408

After:

Font supports language 'fa_Arab'

[simoncozens]

The mark in question is U+0654 Arabic Hamza Above, which is obviously a hamza!

The codepoint in question is U+06C0 (ARABIC LETTER HEH WITH YEH ABOVE), which is obviously a yeh!

[khaledhosny]

I meant the problematic part (U+06C0 canonically decomposes to U+06D5 U+0654, and I even got the decomposed form copying dave’s text).

Anyway, my point is that it is not a yeh, but a different style of hamza and U+08CA is not a proper substitute, not until we see more examples of the desired form at least since the good version above is definitely not a yeh.

[simoncozens]

OK, I agree this needs checking. But I do wonder what 08CA is for if not for this kind of thing... (The shaperglot test - U+06C0 should do something different between Arabic and Farsi - is still good.)

[khaledhosny]

But I do wonder what 08CA is for if not for this kind of thing...

Quranic annotation (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19306-quranic-additions.pdf, page 2 and 3).

[khaledhosny]

According https://unicode.org/L2/L2010/10455-of-hamza.pdf, U+06C2 should use the same mark as well, so whatever the final fix, it should be applied to it.

[MAZ06]

Should this issue be opened for Noto Nastaliq as well?

[MAZ06]

Could this be related?