Thireefili: An experiment in removing the bottom diacritics in Thaana

This follows from a little chat Hamid Shafeeu and I had last night. Hamid suggested that the vowel diacritics written on the bottom of the letters in Thaana, the "ibifili" and "eebeefili", should be moved to the top to make the writing look cleaner (and other reasons he offered that I can't remember now). Anyway, the move requires minor changes and should be pretty apparent and easy to learn.

I've altered the FDL licensed "Thaana Unicode Akeh" font by "MITF" to bring the ibifili and eebeefili to the top and laterally inverted them to differentiate from the abafili and aabaafili vowel diacritics. The resulting font which I've called "ThireeFili", is available for download below. The font is free and is released under the Free Documentation License which it's ancestor follows.

I do not particularly like how the two new fili looks but I think moving the bottom diacritics to the top definitely brings a readability improvement. What are your thoughts?

- ThireeFili TrueType font (Thireefili.ttf) - 19.3 KB

This entry was posted by Jaa on Saturday, July 28. 2012 at 11:30. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.

Defined tags for this entry: thaana

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Comments

1. Asneem says:
   
   #1 2012-07-28 12:05 (Reply)

   hmmm. thinking.....

2. faiyal says:
   
   #2 2012-07-28 13:10 (Reply)

   hmm it maybe the fact that we are used to reading it from the bottom for so long that its not easy for us(or me) to be able to easily read it in this new way. Its like my eyes and my brain refuses to read it correctly when all the parts are on top. And its taking too long to read.
   
   On another note, in a pure design look, for me putting all the stuff up just looks plain ugly.
   
   (just my opinion)

3. siku says:
   
   #3 2012-07-28 14:22 (Reply)

   mhmm interesting...

4. alinitkin says:
   
   #4 2012-07-28 15:22 (Reply)

   mm. interesting. im pretty sure it wouldn't take that long to get used to it, at least reading.
   
   but for handwriting, isn't there a flow to the thaana letters, slanting down left from the top right, that is being reversed by these modifications?

5. Jinaa says:
   
   #5 2012-07-28 18:54 (Reply)

   brilliant idea. we can stick but obviously for few or more resistance would be the constraint.

6. Hilath says:
   
   #6 2012-07-28 19:36 (Reply)

   Interesting perspective Jaa. I'm sure we'll get used to it

7. daadi says:
   
   #7 2012-07-31 08:37 (Reply)

   looks interesting. considering its a different concept the getting used to doesn't take as long.
   
   question is how practical will this be?

8. sol says:
   
   #8 2012-08-05 09:58 (Reply)

   i think its much harder. but we may get used to it.

9. Haani says:
   
   #9 2012-08-06 06:43 (Reply)

   What wud soadhube think?

10. abdulla aslam says:
    
    #10 2012-09-04 19:06 (Reply)

    dhivehi bahakee zamaanunsure mi gaumuga beynun kuramun anna varah reethi dhivehi vannthakan dhakkuvaidhey baheh, mi bahah uni ithuru genes huthuru kurumakee mulhi dhivehi adhabiyyaathah faadu kiyeyne kameh kan yageen alhugandu ge edhumakee faadu faaduge dhiraasaa thah koh gen ves alhugandu men ge kaabafain alhugandu menaa hama ah genes dhin mi reethi bahaa hama thah gelluvaalan masakkai nukurumah. egothah masakkai kuraneenama hama yageenun ves thi beyfulhaa dhivehi bahuge hurumai kandaalanee.

11. Mustho says:
    
    #11 2012-10-10 03:46 (Reply)

    Pretty cool stuff as always..keep it up. it helps a lot in the typography area.

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