Section on Counter Styles

[behnam]

I think we need a section in ALReq to cover the needs of predefined-counter-styles for Arabic script.

https://w3c.github.io/predefined-counter-styles/#arabic-styles

The table is specifically very useful, providing comparison between methods:

[khaledhosny]

In Arabic, old books used to use the math symbols for the abjad numbers (so the ا would have a “serif”, ج or ه would be in initial form etc). Presumably because it made the symbols stand out since they are used in isolation.

[ntounsi]

The WP hijai, is the alphabetic order in common use in Arabic.

[behnam]

@khaledhosny, can you elaborate on the "use the math symbols"? Are you saying we have a "math" style for Arabic letters that, under the same type/font, would have a slightly different representation, like a "serif" for the ALEF?

[khaledhosny]

Arabic math alphabetic characters ususally use a different style than regular text characters, for example most modern books in Egypt will use Ruqaa for math with some notable differences than regular Ruqaa; the alef has a top loop, the dal looks like a Nastaliq hamza except when used for functions, for example (see how the enumerated list uses the same symbols as math):

Older books used Naskh style with similar differences:

[behnam]

Interesting examples! Couple of questions:

I see the DAL in the second example:

In the first example, is this the DAL?

And, are this "math style" Arabic commas, or a symbol with a possibly different semantics?

[behnam]

So, in terms of enumerating the alphabet, we can say, for each letter, we have a "text style" singular presentation and a "math style" one.

Now, another question is how to continue counting after we've iterated over all letters. One method I remember from school was (for Persian Abjad) was this: [of course, imagine this list is RTL and right-aligned!]

• ا.
• ب.
• ج.
• ...
• ا.ا.
• ا.ب.
• ا.ج.
• ...
• ب.ا.
• ب.ب.
• ب.ج.
• ...
  And, optionally, SPACE or ZWNJ instead of the DOT.

Anything knows of any other methods?

[khaledhosny]

In the first example, is this the DAL?

Yes.

And, are this "math style" Arabic commas, or a symbol with a possibly different semantics?

AFAIK, it is a just a comma. I don’t know why it is drawn oversized, but that practice seems to continue to date.

[behnam]

Here are two list counter styles, from Arabic books published circa 1982/1983 in Kerala, India.

Observations

1. It looks like the numbers are indices of book sections.

2. Digits 4, 6 and 7 are in Arabic-Indic numerals style, but digit 5 is in Eastern Arabic-Indic numerals style.

Source: http://www.islamicmanuscripts.info/files/Witkam-2014-Kerala-books.pdf

Numbers on Arabic Number Sign

In this book, the index appears on top of Arabic Number Sign, and then the list item ends with an empty circle.

Circled Numbers

Here, the index appears in a circle, and at goes after (left end) of the list item.

See Also

• Discussion on roots of Arabic Number Sign: https://twitter.com/tntype/status/917318052571688962

[khaledhosny]

That sign looks more like U+0614 ARABIC SIGN TAKHALLUS than U+0600 ARABIC NUMBER SIGN.

[behnam]

That's interesting, @khaledhosny! It does look like the reference shape of U+0614 ARABIC SIGN TAKHALLUS, although it doesn't make sense to have that here. Do you know about the history of U+0614?

[khaledhosny]

No more information, I’m afraid, other than it is one of these Urdu symbols that were encoded together.