The idea is to give both Noto Sans Arabic and Noto Sans higher precedence than DejaVu Sans for Arabic users (the latter defined as users who are using an Arabic locale).
It will be easier to talk about this when I have uploaded the related changes to the language-selector package. Then people will be able to simply update and test for themselves, and possible modifications can be made. But before I do that, there is a pending item which @xlmnxp is investigating: Should we use the basic Noto Sans Arabic font or the Noto Sans Arabic UI variant.
Ok, I think I will upload a change where Noto Sans Arabic UI is used for sans-serif. Once it’s in the archive, people will be able to test more easily.
What about when I am using a German locale and want to have a better Arabic font overall without installing another language? For example, in Kubuntu 20.04 I was using a German local and did not install any other language, and the Arabic font in Facebook in Firefox was much better by default than in Ubuntu.
That’s a limitation with this solution. Hopefully, in the future, we can set it up in Ubuntu in a similar way that Kubuntu does today. But for now (Ubuntu 20.10 and possibly 20.04) we need to keep this requirement.
However, there are ways to work around it. Reminding again about this comment.
The project with improving Arabic rendering is not completed yet. We should fix it so an Arabic install of Ubuntu comes with the better fonts rendering by default, and the changes should also be backported to Ubuntu 20.04.
But before I go on with that, please let me know if you think that the current groovy configuration is good enough.
Since the fonts-noto-core package won’t be included in the ISO with this solution, it will not be possible to apply it on the installer itself.
What I intend to fix is that if a user chooses Arabic as the installation language, the better rendering will be present at the first boot/login after the install. But that’s not in place yet, so you can’t test that part right now.
The more open counters in the new font should make Arabic text much easier to read. As long as there is still no Ubuntu fonts release that includes the Arabic and Hebrew work done by Dalton Maag back in 2011 (what happened here, @sabdfl?), @gunnarhj’s work should be a huge improvement. Excellent work, Gunnar!
I am on 20.04 Pop_OS! all seems to be working as expected, perhaps a small note would be that arrows still point left to right instead of right to left when switching the language, but I guess that is not font relevant in any way.
I think the last time I had Arabic interfaces on any operating system was in 2001
I’m sorry to ask if this has been answered already (I found it hard to follow a previous comment where Dejavu is deleted) , but what would be the steps to have this Arabic font (Noto Arabic UI) only show up for Arabic text without having to change the default latin font itself? is this possible?
Thanks. Kubuntu’s approach, i.e. to basically replace DejaVu with Noto, is probably a better long-term way to deal with this matter. But that will be another project.
