Deciphering basmalah (opens in new tab)

Making the rounds last week was this magnificent article on the complications of Arabic typesetting, . The author, Saleh, promises: The reply took and the closure of the ticket took half an hour or so. The reasons behind it took five hundred years to pile up, and they involve a twice-mutilated vizier, a Qurʾān that vanished for four centuries, a Beirut newspaperman with a deadline, and an Egyptian physician who taught himself font engineering for fun (or that what I imagine about him). Walkin...