** Some comments about the Persian characters and their actual shapes.

By:	Paymaan Jafari Taayemeh (admin@pooyesh.com)
	$Version: FarsiSamples.txt 0.0 (27-Feb-98) © CopyRight 1998 Paymaan Jafari

Legal:	The FarsiSamples.gif and FarsiSamples.txt are both © CopyRight 1998
	By Paymaan Jafari, All Rights Reserved.

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Comments:

The FarsiSamples.gif contains the actual shapes of the Persian characters
and some specifications about them.  In this text file, I try to describe
the usage and some of the specifications of the Persian writing.

Please note that the type face used in the picture is one of the popular
type faces used in *printed* persian text.

In the picture, you see:

	1) Some big char shapes, that are what we are describing here.

	2) Some tiny char shapes, that are the adapted form to implement
	   an ISO-8859 like Persian character shape, temporarily called
	   IPJ char-set and is currently in use on the Amiga ® Computers.
	   The IPJ char-set is described in full details in our Homepage
	   at the <http://www.pooyesh.com/palapal/ipj_set.html>.

	   There, you can also find some usefull Amiga fonts in that
	   format, that can be used in Amiga computers to use both
	   Persian/English languages simultaneously.

	3) Some lines of comment and an example of 2 words written in
	   Persian (my name and family ;) to show how the writing is.


-- First of all, Persian is written from Right to Left, note to the arrow
below the example in the FarsiSamples.gif, So Persian is a RTL language.

In the current environments, the persian text is stored like any other
text, so this doesn't make any trouble with the text rendering engines.

Also you'ld better to know that in this language,  the words are
continues (mostly).

-- There are 32 alphabets in the Persian, that are grouped in lines and
shown in the picture.  Unlike English, the used shape of the alphabet
differs regarding the position of the character in the word.

Ofcourse this is not true for all of the alphabet, but most of them
(look at the picture again).  There is a difference in the shapes
of the actual shapes of the printed chars, and the computer chars.

The charset that is used in computer fonts, is adapted on the IPJ set,
so many of the shapes are deleted and others adapted to a form usable
in 2 or more positons.  In some of alphabets, 4 shapes are adapted
even to the 1 shape. 

To show the procedure more understandable, the connection positions
of the shapes are marked with a red vertical line in each shape,
so you can get easily where in the characters they connect to the other
one.

There are 3 general positions in a word, the beginning of the word, middle
and end of it.

Some of shapes attach, and some not.  To feel the situation, take
a look at the picture again.  Those chars that have a red line in the
left, are those which are used for the beginning of the word.

The chars that have red lines in both sides, are those that are attachable
in both sides and use in middle of the words.  The chars that have
red line in the right side, are those which are used in the end of the
Persian word (notice that persian is RTL, so the end of word is its
left side).

As you may be found till now, not all of the alphabet have all 3 forms
(begining, middle, end), these are characters that don't attach in
none or one of the sides.  The words containing them, are non continused
in those positions.  For example, both words of my name and sure name
in the example are non continused in the last characters.  This is because
the characters before the last one.  They have no shape that is
attachable from the left side, so their next character should be a shape
that doesn't attaches from right side. In my name example, both are
last characters, so the used shapes are the "end" shapes of that alphabets.