UnNews:Emirate gets its own font
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| Emirate gets its own font | 
|
1 May 2017
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The Crown Prince of Dubai has unveiled a brand-new font that Microsoft designed for it, and has instructed the government to use the font in all official correspondence.
Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed said the font "is a very important step of our continuous efforts to be ranked first in the digital world" despite having no computers and confiscating those of tourists when they cross the border.
Councillor Abdulla Al Shaibani said the new font will be a bridge between the East and West. The key to this is that the font's Arabic characters will read left-to-right, while the Roman characters will go right-to-left. This innovation should baffle all the world's peoples equally.
Best of all, the Dubai font is virtually indistinguishable from the font that comes standard on all Android phones, and which users are powerless to change. That font, called Roboto, is used by millions of phone users to lull themselves to sleep reading web pages on their tiny screens. It is renowned for making even interesting text boring, although it does make driving interesting. Samer Abu Ltaif, a developer for Microsoft Dubai, said the debut of the new font was "a collaboration that adopts more technical solutions to serve the communities," which may be a reference to the American Health Care Act, the Republican plan to "repeal and replace" Obama-care with something that looks and acts the same.
The Sheik warned that it would be a crime for anyone to be baptised in the new font.
A team from the Monotype foundry, which once designed a font called Monotype, touted the benefits of everyone having his or her own font. Dr Nadine Chahine, Monotype's doctor of letters, also numbers, said the foundry designed the Arabic and Roman options at the same time. This means that a document in Arabic and English can present both in the same font, as though that matters. However, having them also written in the same colour will be an extra-cost option.
Some in the Emirates who felt that the Dubai font needed some additional way to stand apart wanted it to omit certain letters from one or both alphabets, but they were outvoted, and buried in shallow graves.
Now that Dubai has its own font, the Sheik says the next steps are for the city to have its own number line and "five or so" new genders.
Sources[edit]
- Staff "Dubai becomes first city in the world to have its own font". The National (Emirates), April 30, 2017