Add Hebrew and Arabic; rework Italic

[aaronbell]

Summary of the Pull Request

Major update!

This update includes the brand new Arabic and Hebrew language coverage, along with a variety of bug fixes to the upright and italic fonts. There has also been a major overhaul of the Cascadia Code Italic lowercase to make the forms align better with our vision for the font. Enjoy :).

Supersedes #491

PR Checklist

Cascadia Code

• Closes support persian and arabic #84 - Arabic language support added!
• Closes 2105.24 - Italic Style Groups and Font File Names Incorrect #465 - Hebrew language support added!
• Closes Some below-base anchor points are too high #499 - Adjusted base mark positions / set others to be ignored in propagateAnchors

Cascadia Code Italic

• Closes Some cursive lowercase glyphs appear to have a different slant than the others #470 - Adjusted slant on cursive forms to feel a bit better
• Closes Option to use the old italic version #468 - Moved cursive forms to ss01 / salt feature
• Closes Italic version: make the vertical pipe character actually vertical #507 - Changed bar / broken bar to be upright for better clarity. All ligature forms adjusted.

Both

• Closes U+0192 is a lowercase letter and should visibly different from f in italic #494 - Adjusted ƒ in both upright and italic

Detailed Description of the Pull Request / Additional comments

• Arabic (and Urdu) support added (design by Mohamad Dakak). See the PDF for the exciting new Arabic ligature functionality used in Cascadia Code that gives the font greatly improved readability and feel more more akin to a text typeface. Don't want all that? Don't worry, Cascadia Mono will house a normal version of Arabic.

• Hebrew support added (design by Liron Lavi Turkenich)

• Fixing a bug in the ccmp feature file and added ccmp to the feature set in the build script.
• Deleting the (unused) liga feature file
• Vika has reviewed and improved some forms in Cascadia Code upright.
• /f, /l, /s, /r (and related forms) have been updated to follow more 'generic' forms. Previous versions have been moved to ss01 / salt OT features.

New default forms

Cursive forms (ss01 / salt)

• Changed design of ƒ in upright to align better with the standard f. In the italic, the ƒ has been changed to follow the cursive version. When ss01 is applied, the design of the f and ƒ are swapped, and if the locl EWE language setting is applied, the 'f' swaps for a straight descender version (with cursive ƒ). Complicated, but achieves supporting everything.

• Entry and exit strokes across the italic lowercase have been rounded to better achieve the fun / playful design language that we intended for the italic. Other skeletons have been modified as necessary. Cyrillic has also been updated for better consistency with the new design.

• Greek lowercase has been updated per feedback from Gerry Leonidas to be more cohesive (No longer a mix between a Monday and Friday font. All Friday, all the time)

old

new

Validation Steps Performed

All updated reviewed, hinted, and reviewed again :)

[aaronbell]

Good luck @DHowett

[DHowett]

Good luck @DHowett

That's the most ominous pull request invitation I've ever received.

[DHowett]

Vika has reviewed and improved some forms in Cascadia Code upright.

Ooh, interested in what changed here!

Monday ... Friday

I love these terms very much.

[aaronbell]

The changes were primarily made to the Bulgarian forms, and otherwise are pretty minor.

For example:

Just some slight improvements to Cyrillic rendering.

[mdtauk]

@aaronbell Thank you soo much for taking everyone's views on board, but still keeping the fun and playful feel of the italics that give Cascadia Code soooo much character!

These look so readable and yet still with flourish

Your efforts are appreciated from this guy here...

[DHowett]

One person I asked about the new italic (non-cursive) expressed a concern about the /l looking a bit un-l-like (in isolation). I wonder if it's related to it having a longer leftward stroke than h and b and letters with ascenders... or having one at all? But at the same time, I know that on an l it's not an ascender and should not be given the same treatment.

I find that I'm always thrown off when I see the l in Source Code Pro:

Something about that doesn't feel right to me, and I'm a bit reminded of it with our new one. I dunno. All in my head?

[aaronbell]

Hmmm. Possibly? That particular glyph gave me some struggles since it needs to be a bit wider than the entry strokes on the /b and /h (to fill space), but yeah, being too long looks weird (particularly in the lightest). Pulling it back a little would look a little like this:

[DHowett]

I do think I like that more :) (I'll also ask the opinion of the other person who had a comment :))

Yeah -- it seems a hard one to get right!

[DHowett]

@aaronbell I'm ready to merge this if you are!

[aaronbell]

🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

[DHowett]

you rock!

[aaronbell]

@DHowett Was wondering what the plan is to release this update :). I'm looking forward to folks being able to use the Arabic / Hebrew!

[DHowett]

Now that we're no longer holding back communication (and release notes and stuff) for the recent announcements, I'm hoping to have an update out shortly.
It's only harmed by the fact that Terminal may have to update as well. Ghhhhh

[aaronbell]

'may' :)

Look forward to it!