This is the README for alkalami version 1.000 (2017-05-30).

Alkalami is designed for Arabic-based writing systems in    
the Kano region of Nigeria and Niger. Alkalami (pronounced  
al-KA-la-mi) is the local word for the Arabic "qalam", a    
type of sharpened stick used for writing on wooden boards   
in the Kano region of Nigeria and in Niger, and what gives  
the style its distinct appearance. The baseline stroke is   
very thick and solid. The ascenders and other vertical      
strokes including the teeth are very narrow when compared   
to the baseline. A generous line height is necessary to     
allow for deep swashes and descenders, and the overall look 
of the page is a very black, solid rectangle. Diacritics    
are much smaller in scale, with very little distance from   
the main letters.                                           

Alkalami supports a subset of the Unicode 9.0 Arabic        
character repertoire. It only includes characters known to  
be used in Modern Standard Arabic and characters known to   
be necessary in a few West African languages.               

Font smarts are implemented using the OpenType technology.  
A number of glyph variations are accessible through         
Stylistic Sets available via the OpenType technology.       

Alkalami is released under the SIL Open Font License.
Alkalami is a trademark of SIL International.
	
See OFL.txt for details of the SIL Open Font License.

For further information about this font, including Unicode  
ranges supported, OpenType font features and how to use     
them, and licensing, please see the documentation on the    
website (http://software.sil.org/alkalami/) or in the       
documentation subfolder of this font package.               

Encoding: 

The fonts are encoded according to Unicode, so your         
application must support Unicode text in order to access    
letters. For Arabic text, your application must be able to  
handle Right to Left text as well as the initial, medial,   
final forms of each Arabic letter. You will also need some  
way of entering Unicode text into your document.            

Keyboarding:

This font does not include any keyboarding helps or         
utilities. You may use the built-in keyboards of the        
operating system. You may also need to install an           
appropriate keyboard and input method for the characters    
of the language you wish to use. If you want to enter       
characters that are not supported by any system keyboard,   
the Keyman program (www.keyman.com) can be helpful on       
Windows systems. Also available for Windows is MSKLC        
(http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx).      
For other platforms, KMFL (http://kmfl.sourceforge.net/),   
XKB (http://www.x.org/wiki/XKB) or Ukelele                  
(http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele) can be helpful.            

If you want to enter characters that are not supported      
by any system keyboard, and to access the full Unicode      
range, you might try charmap.exe on Windows or, on Ubuntu   
or similar software, gucharmap or kcharselect.              

Another method of entering some symbols is provided by a    
few applications such as Adobe InDesign or LibreOffice.org. 
They can display a glyph palette or input dialog that shows 
all the glyphs (symbols) in a font and allow you to enter   
them by clicking on the glyph you want.                     

Rendering:

This font is designed to work with the OpenType technology. 
To take advantage of the advanced typographic capabilities  
of this font, you must be using applications that provide   
an adequate level of support for OpenType.                  

For more information see the Alkalami website:
http://software.sil.org/alkalami/

This CTAN package was packaged by Bob Tennent
rdt(at)cs.queensu.ca.
