Sakkal Design and
Bitstream Partner To Bring Arabic Fonts to Developers
World-renowned typeface design firm establishes
long-term relationship with Bitstream
BOTHELL, WASHINGTON and CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — June 22,
2005 — Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ:
BITS) and Sakkal Design today announced an agreement to bring
a wide variety of classic and contemporary Arabic fonts to developers
licensing Bitstream Font
Fusion®, Bitstream’s premier font rendering technology,
and Bitstream
Panorama, a global text composition engine. These Arabic fonts
are all OpenType typefaces that support Arabic including Moroccan
and Persian languages. The typefaces support the Arabic script range
in Unicode 4.1, which also includes: Urdu, Pashto, Uighur, Sindhi,
old Malay, old Hausa, Kurdish, Berber, and other less common scripts.
Arabic fonts available include:
- Hasan Alquds, a contemporary simple typeface
based on a Kufi style
- Sakkal Baseet Bold, a contemporary geometrical
and extremely simplified typeface based on a Square Kufi style
- Sakkal Majalla Family, a text typeface designed
for maximum legibility in small sizes while maintaining a traditional
look, based on a cursive Naskh style. Current releases include
Sakkal Majalla Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, and Extra Bold.
- Sakkal Seta Pro, a contemporary headlines typeface
based on an Eastern Kufi style
“New technologies are making it possible to produce fonts that
meet the demands of today’s users for high quality display and
printing of text, especially for complex scripts like Arabic,”
stated Mamoun Sakkal, Principal of Sakkal Design. “This makes
it especially exciting for us to partner with Bitstream, a leader
in making fonts look their best when displayed on a variety of devices,
to provide our customers with excellent Arabic fonts no matter where
they may be used.”
A well-respected typographer, Mamoun Sakkal of Sakkal Design is a
calligrapher and typeface designer who has received international
awards in both calligraphy and typeface design. He recently won an
international competition by Type Directors Club of New York for his
Arabic script font “Sakkal Seta” which will be available
through this program. “We’re very pleased to work
with Sakkal Design to provide a complete solution for developers
needing to support Arabic,” stated Anna Chagnon, President
and Chief Executive Officer of Bitstream. “It’s necessary
for our partners to support complex scripting languages, and it’s
significant that a world-renowned typographer and calligrapher such
as Mamoun Sakkal is working with us. We look forward to making this
new partnership a success.”
About
Font Fusion
Font Fusion
is Bitstream’s premier font subsystem, rendering high-quality
characters in any format, at any resolution, on any platform or
device. Delivering exceptional text rendering for consumer electronics
devices and mobile phones, Font Fusion is the ideal solution for
small embedded systems.
Font Fusion is both small and fast. Developers can compile the
source code in 36 KB on up, depending on options. It generates more
than 37,000 characters per second on a 450MHz Pentium II processor,
rendering a TrueType font at 25 lines per em.
Font Fusion is designed for consumer electronics devices, mobile
phones, PDAs, set-top boxes, digital TVs, printers, graphics applications,
and embedded systems.
Bitstream Panorama
Bitstream
Panorama is an easy-to-integrate product for consumer electronics
devices, mobile phones, set-top boxes, and embedded systems. A small,
portable, global text composition engine, Bitstream Panorama enables
developers to draw strings of characters and lay out complex lines
of text. The product supports all international languages, including
Arabic and Indian language scripts.
Sakkal Design
Mamoun Sakkal, a native of Aleppo, Syria, who immigrated to the
United States in 1978, is founder and principal of Sakkal Design
in Bothell, WA. Providing graphic design solutions to major US corporations,
his firm has focused on Arabic calligraphy and typography since
the 1990’s. Sakkal Design’s expertise combines a deep
respect and knowledge of traditional calligraphy with the latest
in computer technology. For more information, please visit http://www.sakkal.com/type.
Bitstream
Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ:
BITS) is a software development company that makes communications
compelling. Bitstream enables customers worldwide to render high-quality
text, browse the Web on wireless devices, select from the largest
collection of fonts online, and customize documents over the Internet.
Its core competencies include font technology, browsing technology,
e-commerce technology, and publishing technology. For more information,
please visit Bitstream at http://www.bitstream.com.
Bitstream and Font Fusion are registered trademarks
and the Bitstream logo and Bitstream Panorama are trademarks of
Bitstream Inc. Other technologies and brand names are trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Contact
Anna Chagnon
President and CEO
Bitstream Inc.
617.520.8619
Mamoun Sakkal Principal
Sakkal Design
425.483.8830
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