Interestingly Google, ten hours a go, pushed a new release for Noto Arabic Sans UI[0], I’ll be testing it out now.
[0] https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/commit/ee7f07c91fa5869c5571b5b4648f8972e0da432f
Update: Nothing ground breaking, Naskh has more weight, Sans has some improvements which I can’t tell.
Great we agree on that. Which should lead to not using the font because if they are small then the Arabic text is not readable, as the user can’t distinguish between them. We are dismissing much better fonts in this thread due to one letter or two not being well-displayed in web pages and I have no idea how the complete alphabet being broken is still OK-ish.
Font on android might be good (I don’t testify that) due to a lot of other factors; Rendering, size and more. I am not going to change any size from my end on Ubuntu as a user, and this is the expected behavior; The default font should look good out-of-the-box without any change from the user or further tweaks and testing from his side.
Android is also designed for smaller screens, hence the entire font experience is different than a gigantic 21" display for example and 1920x1080 resolution.
This is not true according to my testing, are you using the UI variants? Without it, both Sans and Naskh break in a similar way. See screenshots below for comparison between the two.
Yes.
I’m not suggesting we use none-UI version for UI, that will definitely break many things!
I didn’t say that either. I said that the issue he pointed in the previous font family is also happening here.
Since we dismissed Noto Sans non-UI version because of the padding issue I don’t see why we continue with Naskh with the +tons extra bugs too.
Additional testing I did: The diacritics are even smaller in UI compared to non-UI Naskh.
Very subjective, I don’t see issues there at all, diacritics are small it seems, that’s about it.
Unlikely. Try reading a book or >1500 words articles on daily basis with it.
Edit: I also just noticed that the bug I mentioned in terms of text padding/size is also in your screenshots. See how the line height is increases in the Arabic line compared to the English one in your screenshot of Gedit.
Isn’t that a design choice? See below, it seems consistent:
It seems tilted, but tilt is fixed or reset after space (if that makes sense 
), look at the highlight, its fixed in height.
No it’s a bug. If I have an Arabic and an English texts both in one document, then the height of the Arabic lines shouldn’t be more than the English ones when highlighted or selected.
You are looking into it just from one-two lines, but look at this larger example where multiple lines are concerned, see how the background (highlighted) of the Arabic paragraphs is much larger than the English one (Although both of them are 3 lines!):
And see how when selected, the Arabic one gives a larger padding/margin than the English:
@mhsabbagh I’m with you there, now try the exact above, but with Noto Arabic Sans UI, you’ll get identical results, that’s what I observed at least! See my shots above (I’m aware I did two lines only).
That is something I concur on. Our goal should be to provide a decent default out of the box without a need (for most users) to either switch font or font size.
I have seen tons of questions at Ask Ubuntu by users who have tried to customize their fonts somehow and messed it up.
I do not observe them to be identical because the letters and diacritics in Noto Sans UI are actually touching the border of the selection (Because it is a condensed font), unlike in Naskh where the letters/diacritics are far from the edge of the selected area and hence do not use the space given to them:
I think Noto Sans UI is better in this aspect
Note, I didn’t say broken or unreadable, I just said smaller! And by the way I struggle to read diacritics on both fonts on non-HiDPI displays.
Also to add, diacritics is not very common on UI elements, and it’s not a requirement when writing Arabic, it is there to aid with reading, you tend to see it on Quran for e.g. or on certain letters within a large paragraph for further clarification.
As a quick test, I visiting two popular sites, Aljazeera and Alarabyia (I read neither b.t.w), I didn’t spot a single diacritic on any of the text! Oh, not even on ar.wikipeia.org or today’s headline article’s text.
I’m not down playing diacritics, but it shouldn’t be the subject when talking about UI fonts.
Believe it or not, I won’t use either for that, and that’s why almost every reader gives choice of fonts! For long text, I tend to go for print fonts, and for long articles any respectable website will enforce a suitable font to match its content.
Remember, we are talking about the default font on UI’s where author/programmer did not make an explicit choice.
We should be fine, trust me 
PS: For me, diacritics = Tashkeel, not including Hamaza.
So you agree with what I’ve said:
And this one of the reasons why I think they’re ugly/busy/messy looking, they strech both horizentally and vertically, see below:
We lost a whole word because it’s trying to fill available space.
Also …
Also, see below I delibrately zoomed out to make a point about the font looking congested:
… the gap (by default) between lines is very narrow at the bottom paragraph! Of course, both look better than the shot in real life
Finally, a reminder, we are discussing a win-win situation here, so it’s not the end of the world 
You sure about that? Here are just tens of them on today’s Arabic Wikipedia news section:
Breaking Tashkeel absolutely breaks Arabic. Any respectful book/website/document author will have to use it in almost every sentence written. And the “shaddah” ّ is considered a letter in Arabic, and its absence (or failure to read it) means you have just removed a letter from the word.
I’m not down playing diacritics, but it shouldn’t be the subject when talking about UI fonts.
It looks like you misunderstand that the font is not just going to get applied on Ubuntu’s GNOME Shell, it is going to get applied on all applications and hence their content. Documents, text files, every single web page without an enforced font (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube…) all of them will use the font.
But I think I have spotted the problem:
Believe it or not, I won’t use either for that
If you do not plan on using either for that then I do not understand why are you arguing about them in this point. This discussion is for users will have to keep with the default font for everything and do not plan to change it afterwards at all. If you are going to use a totally different font family anyway rather than what we have been discussing for weeks, then I do not see how this discussion affects you or why are you concerned with it, if you plan to change the fonts anyway.
We lost a whole word because it’s trying to fill available space.
This happens everywhere on all fonts when the word is longer than the allowed display size. Here it is with Naskh font and see how it also fails to display 4 words. This is not an actual issue or bug:
Also, see below I delibrately zoomed out to make a point about the font looking congested:
I do not know why both blocks of texts are badly shaped and hinted, but anyway I see the second one much better and readable. The font is more “strong” and hence more easy to read. I didn’t have to “zoom my eyes” (close them to increase my ability to read) with the second one (which Sans font).
Finally, a reminder, we are discussing a win-win situation here, so it’s not the end of the world
I completely disagree, it is a somehow-win (Sans) vs absolutely broken garbage (Naskh) for me. You are recommending a broken font family for all Ubuntu’s users although you say that you are not going to use it for reading anyway, which I find quite weird.
In addition to that… Noto Sans UI actually can display 3 words in the app drawer, but it just depends on how many letters overall there are. See these two examples where it succeeds in the first and and not the second one because of the number of letters. This is absolutely normal:
I missed that, my bad, the rest however is diacritic free, also see the other two website, but then again I’m not arguing we break diacritics.
This is what I saw (outside the VM):
Again, I’m not suggesting that, and Noto Naskh UI doesn’t break it either!
Please don’t take it out of context, it’s ugly what you’re trying to do there, and no I won’t explain myself.
You keep calling it garbage, you and only you! Stop being selfish please, it is mainstream, it’s the default on Android, do I have to keep repeating myself?!
I’m sorry but I’m done with this discussion, it’s becoming unproductive
Testing Arabic under both MacOS and Win10 is unveiling, here are my findings:
), when fonts don’t contain any diacritics, they appear larger! Only when they contain diacritics they shrink relative to latin. [1]
[0]
I missed that, my bad, the rest however is diacritic free
Almost every single article in Arabic Wikipedia is using them. They are all over the homepage too. I have no idea why you just think you should look at the top of the page without actually looking to content?
About your rant in:
Please don’t take it out of context, it’s ugly what you’re trying to do there, and no I won’t explain myself. You keep calling it garbage, you and only you! Stop being selfish please, it is mainstream, it’s the default on Android, do I have to keep repeating myself?!
Of course you won’t continue discussion after you have exposed yourself , and there’s nothing taken out of context. I already answered your android point but it sounds like you don’t want to understand. The font is not mainstream and its usage on android is under a quite different conditions than Ubuntu.
Testing Arabic under both MacOS and Win10 is unveiling
No they are not. macOS and Win 10 have different ways of dealing with fonts and I am not sure how anything you find there is “unveiling” to Ubuntu users. (Size, hinting, smoothing…) the renderer is different and hence doesn’t relate to this discussion and let alone that it has different fonts setups based on the Windows version (Pro… etc) and whether they are Arabic versions targeting MENA or not… Whether they are good or bad there is irrelevant to us.
I’m testing Arabic as a system language and keyboard input language too. Thanks happy hacking!
Thanks @munadi and @mhsabbagh for your dedicated input in this matter. We have reached a point where I need to make a decision, and I’m inclined to say that we should go for Noto Sans Arabic UI for 20.04 and 20.10. That’s what we have had in 20.04 for a few weeks, and besides the two of you, there have been no complaints from users with an Arabic locale. It’s an end in itself to not change it again in our latest LTS release, and it’s my understanding that everyone who has expressed an opinion considers the change from DejaVu Sans to Noto Sans Arabic UI to be an improvement.
This is not the end of it. As previously mentioned I would like to change Ubuntu’s font configuration so Noto fonts generally are given higher precedence than DejaVu. For Arabic that would mean that Noto would be used by default irrespective of the locale.
Let’s follow the development upstream of both Noto Sans Arabic UI and Noto Naskh Arabic UI. Maybe there will be a consensus at some point to reconsider the default Arabic font on Ubuntu again.
I’d also like to mention that font configuration is not just about picking a font. fontconfig offers several possibilities to fine tune the configuration, e.g. control aspects such as antialias and hinting. Even if I’m certainly not an expert on that, I’m ready to help with such experiments during the 21.04 development cycle to find out if there is room for improvement via advanced font configuration.
But as regards groovy (and of course 20.04) it’s too late for that kind of experimenting. On Monday we enter into Beta Freeze, and the time remaining until the release of Ubuntu 20.10 should be used for fixing important bugs.
So if nobody voices strong and well-founded objections, my plan is to change it back in groovy from Noto Naskh Arabic UI to Noto Sans Arabic UI on Sunday evening.
Thanks @gunnarhj, no objection from me
PS: Ignore my previous rant, he managed to tick me off some how.
Great, thanks.
Am gonna open bug reports at Google’s GitHub about the issues I had in the font, and then hope Debian can pull a newer version containing the fixes.
Best.
Thank you 
@gunnarhj for answering my question at
askubuntu.com/a/1280821/1134233
I see you’ve made good progress, well done!
I’ve seen this issue come up again and again with Foss software trying to choose a good typeface for the Arabic script but it is hard!
Here is another example: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/7840
There are many types of texts as you mentioned before: button, menus, deskrop UI, articles, books, wikis …etc. So it is really hard to have an option that will fit all, choosing anything will be a compromise to at least one category.
Also remember that there are simply a dozen or so of languages that write in the Arabic script so it hard to find a typeface that supports most if not all of them and open-source.
In the telegram issue above there are other interesting typefaces that are not mentioned here. They are open-source and also well crafted, but not packages for debian.
I have used Noto Naskh Arabic{, UI}, Noto Sans Arabic{, UI}, IBM Plex Arabic, Sahel, Vazir, Kacst, Amiri, Cairo … and many more before (btw all are open-source 
). but it’s been almost 2 years that I’m using Sahel exclusively. IMO it is the best option that does not compromise as much as the others. it is lightweight and there is a version that does not include Latin-glyphs, the developer is receptive to suggestion and fixes. There is even a variable version if it ever get support from fontconfig.
If you guys are interested you can take it into consideration in next version, and help test/report bugs:
I also want to inform you that after setting my locale to Arabic the font still did not change in Firefox/Chrome/Epiphany. but it changed in Gedit/Mousepad/Thunar/Nautilus …etc in Xubuntu 20.04
