We’ve had several previous versions of the Assyrian Language Kit in the past 6 years or so and the unique nature of the Assyrian script has always presented challenges. This upcoming OS X version is unfortunately no different.

At a typographic level, the Assyrian script is similar to Arabic in structure — it too is written from right to left and uses a variety of letter forms depending on the character and its position in a word (isolated, initial, medial and final). These same things make it difficult to implement properly and there are also a few glitches in Apple’s advanced typography support that are hampering our efforts...so far. Nevertheless, we are attempting to work around the biggest issues and hope to have a solution soon.

As you can see above, we provide a total of 4 different fonts and two different vowel systems (three, if you count the lack of vowels) — offering support for most varieties of the written language. All four of our fonts are designed from scratch and represent traditional typestyles used by various communities.

More news about when you can expect an OS X version of the Assyrian Language Kit will be made available once we’ve addressed the remaining problem areas.