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Central Kurdish (ckb): localized form for U+0662 digit two #719

Description

@SarKurd

IBM Plex Sans Arabic supports Central Kurdish, but the shape of digit 2 does not match the form normally used in Sorani Kurdish.

CLDR uses the arab numbering system for ckb, so the Sorani digits are U+0660–U+0669. That makes digit two:

٢ — U+0662 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT TWO

The character already exists in IBM Plex Sans Arabic. The issue is the glyph shape, not Unicode coverage.

Comparison

Image

Two widely used Kurdish fonts, Rudaw and NRT, both encode the Sorani digit two as U+0662 and draw it using the Kurdish form.

I checked the font files directly:

Rudaw:
U+0662 → uni0662
U+06F2 → not present

NRT:
U+0662 → uni0662
U+06F2 → not present

IBM Plex Sans Arabic:
U+0662 → uni0662

The difference is visible in the glyphs:

Rudaw

Image

NRT

Image

IBM Plex Sans Arabic

Image

It would be great if Plex could provide the Sorani form of U+0662 when the language is Central Kurdish (ckb), presumably through the appropriate OpenType language-specific localization.

Real-world usage

IBM Plex Sans Arabic is already used in high-visibility Sorani Kurdish products, including:

Kurdistan Regional Government Services The main public services portal for the Kurdistan Regional Government
AVA Media The largest Sorani Kurdish TV and media networks

This means Central Kurdish content is already being published at scale with IBM Plex Sans Arabic, so improving the Sorani digit forms would have an immediate real-world impact.

There is also an existing broader issue about Central Kurdish support: #597.

A related Noto discussion exists around the Kurdish form of digit two in notofonts/arabic#273, although that issue discusses U+06F2. In practice, CLDR and the Rudaw/NRT fonts above use U+0662 for Central Kurdish.

References

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