Semitic Stretch Fonts
Custom Semitic-script fonts with kashida-style horizontal widening ligatures for scribal-style column justification, plus centered mark positioning for Arabic vowels stacked on Hebrew consonants (Judeo-Arabic use). 21 fonts covering Hebrew, Syriac, and Ethiopic. Free to use — each font retains its upstream license (OFL or GPL-2.0). Source repo: github.com/andyagtech/semitic-stretch-fonts
How to use: insert the trigger character N times after a stretchable letter and the font substitutes a widened variant via GSUB.
- Hebrew: trigger
U+05C6(Hebrew Punctuation Nun Hafukha) - Syriac + Ethiopic: trigger
U+E000(Private Use Area — Chrome/Blink strips U+2060 as a Unicode default-ignorable before shaping, so PUA is used instead)
Hebrew
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Hebrew (v2)Derived from Frank Ruhl Libre · OFLFlagship font — 22 widenable letters including aleph, ayin, tet, tzade, qof, plus per-variant hand-tuning. Uses U+05C6 trigger.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Hebrew (v1)Derived from Frank Ruhl Libre · OFLFirst-generation build — six kalabush letters only. Superseded by v2.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Keter Aram TsovaDerived from Keter Aram Tsova (Culmus) · GPL-2.0
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Shmulik CLMDerived from Shmulik CLM (Culmus) · GPL-2.0
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Hillel CLMDerived from Hillel CLM (Culmus) · GPL-2.0
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Gladia CLMDerived from Gladia CLM (Culmus) · GPL-2.0
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Noto Sans HebrewDerived from Noto Sans Hebrew (Google) · OFL
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Noto Serif HebrewDerived from Noto Serif Hebrew (Google) · OFL
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch ShofarDerived from Shofar (Culmus) · GPL-2.0
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch FreeMonoDerived from GNU FreeMono · GPL-2.0Monospace. Each stretch level adds exactly one cell width.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Nachlieli CLMDerived from Nachlieli CLM (Culmus) · GPL-2.0
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Ezra SIL SRDerived from Ezra SIL SR · OFLScholarly Bible font with full cantillation.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Stam Ashkenaz CLMDerived from Stam Ashkenaz CLM (Culmus) · GPL-2.0Ashkenazi Torah-scribal style.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Shlomo SemiStamDerived from Shlomo SemiStam (Open Siddur project) · OFLDerived from Ezra SIL SR; full cantillation.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch RashiDerived from Noto Rashi Hebrew (Google) · OFLSemi-cursive Rashi commentary script.
Syriac
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Nohadra SapnaDerived from Nohadra Syriac Sapna (Sargis Yonan) · OFLBlock-style non-cursive Syriac.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Nohadra AmediaDerived from Nohadra Syriac Amedia (Sargis Yonan) · OFL
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch RamsinaDerived from Ramsina (SIL Global) · OFLCursive East Syriac at UPM=2048. Reserved-name derivative — 'Ramsina' and 'SIL' are OFL §3 reserved names for the upstream. Widens the ISOLATED forms only; for dual-joining letters (beth) this means end-of-word occurrences.
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch IdiqlatDerived from Idiqlat (SIL Global) · OFLCalligraphic East Syriac at UPM=2048. Widens the classical kalabush right-joining letters (dalath, rish) where native tatweel can't reach; dual-joining letters keep their native U+0640 tatweel-based joining extension. Reserved-name derivative — 'Idiqlat' and 'SIL' are OFL §3 reserved names for the upstream.
Ethiopic (Ge'ez)
- ↓ Download .ttfSemitic Stretch Noto Serif EthiopicDerived from Noto Serif Ethiopic (Google) · OFL5 consonant series × 7 vowel orders = 35 stretchable fidels. me/hha/wa use symmetric 3-column widening (calligraphic result); sza/tha still on legacy one-sided algorithm (visible artifacts at high levels). Confirmed working in offline apps via hb-shape; browser rendering blocked by a Chrome font-selection heuristic that overrides @font-face for the trigger codepoint.
v2.1.0 — full source, build script, and per-font LICENSE sidecars at the GitHub repo linked above.