Historical Background Old South Arabian Script (OSA) was used before the Islamic era not only in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, but actually in the entire Peninsula. In addition, samples of OSA have been found as far as Uruk in Mesopotamia, Delos in Greece, and Giza in Egypt. Archaeological finds show that as far back as the 8th century BCE, OSA was used in trade, religious writing, and in civil records. Following the spread of Islam in Yemen, the decline of OSA began in the 7th century CE as it was gradually supplanted by Arabic script. OSA was typically known by the name of the then-dominant peoples in the Southern Peninsula. At various times, it was known as Sabaean, Qatabani, or Hadramite, among others. Although it was used for a variety of languages, OSA is most strongly associated with Sabaean. Many Peninsular languages borrowed OSA before introducing further changes of their own. Prime examples are the Thamudic, Safaitic, and Lihyanite scripts which eventually developed into independent scripts. The westward migration of the Sabaean people into the Horn of Africa introduced the South Arabian consonantal alphabet into the region. The transplanted script formed the roots of the Geez script of Ethiopia, which, in time and under presumably external influences, developed into a rich syllabary unlike any other Semitic script in history. Even a cursory examination of the letter forms of Modern Ethiopic writing reveal a striking similarity to South Arabian Script. OSA inscriptions typically reveal a dominant right-to-left directionality, although there are also many cases of alternating directions, known as boustrophedon writing. Figure 1 is a fine example of this style of writing. OSA inscriptions were discovered early in the 19th century. Soon thereafter, two orientalists, Gesenius and Rödiger, made great strides towards deciphering the script. Styles of Writing Old South Arabian inscriptions have survived primarily on stone, ceramic, and metallic surfaces. Hundreds of artifacts have been found and, to this day, continue to be discovered. Some of the best examples number of inscriptions on softer materials, such as wood and leather, have also been discovered. Although there is a significant difference between the styles of letters on the hard surfaces and those on the soft. Old South Arabian (Musnad) is composed of 29 letters , that is one letter more than the Arabic alphabet, which is between “S” and “Sh”, and names “Samekh”. Aspects of difference between Musnad and the present Arabic writing is that Musnad is written in separate letters, and the shape of the letters do not change according to its place in the word. However, some letters change according to the beginning of the writing. Musnad is either prominent, or deep. Prominent writings are for important writings and deep writings are for ordinary. The material on which the Musnad was written were stones, rocks, wood, and metal. In the course of its development the Musnad use appeared in the “Lehyanite’, “Thamudic”, “Safaitic”, pen to which many changes and amendments were made. And from it “Habashi’ writing was born. As regards his place among the Arabs of the Peninsula , when we look at the internet and its role in cultural dialogue , the Arabs of the Peninsula considered Musnad inscription which was indisputably their national writing until the dawn of Islam. It was used by people in all parts of Arabia in their homeland and abroad . It was their means of chronology and record of their glories and history.2- Features of Musnad Script: 1. It is written from right to left and vice versa. 2. Its letters are not joined. 3. Shape of letters are uniform despite their positions in the word. 4. Words are separated by vertical lines. 5. A letter is doubled in case of assertion. 6. No points and punctuations. 7. Easy to be learned by beginners. My OSA Musnad Font My design and technical work is only a treatment of the OSA Musnad as a symbol of writing. And it is possible to use in computer.. My design is not aimed at demonstrating the linguistic and intellectual structure of the Old South Arabian (Musnad). It is so simple that it could be easy to learn by learners and those who are interested in the OSA Musnad letters in computer. The basis of such importance is that it spares a lot of time and effort for researchers and students in this field. Formerly they used to write the Musnad texts either by handwriting or scan them , But now they can easily write its texts in OSA Musnad by using keyboard directly, so that they can change , amend and fulfill easily and accurately . So, we made use of speed, easiness and accuracy. And anyone interested in the South Arabian history in any part of the world can due to this design read and write OSA Musnad letters most easily. This design will also be used by historians and archeologists. , as well as specialist linguistics . The design also demonstrates the aesthetics of the Himyarit writing. About this font family Old South Arabian is An Arabic, Old South Arabian and Latin typeface for desktop applications ,for websites, and for digital ads. Old South Arabian font family contains two types: Old South Arabian and Old South Arabian serif. The font includes a design that supports Arabic, Old South Arabian and Latin languages. Old South Arabian typeface comes with many opentype features.

Old Bodoni Wide JNL is based on examples of this classic Bodoni design and contains the quirks and imperfections one might find within a wood type font.

Old Dreadful No. 7 is truly a unique typeface design. Bitstream’s designers and other employees all contributed individual letterforms to the character set. This typeface is definitely not recommended for long blocks of texts! David Robbins expanded his contribution of the capital I into a complete typeface, Eyeballs.

Century Old Style Pro is one of the fonts of the SoftMaker font library.

ALS Mirta is a clean text type well-suited for use in typesetting of smart volumes and kids’ books. A fine and well-balanced antiqua face is complemented by surprisingly vigorous sophisticated italics.

Scrittura was inspired by Anton Scholtz’s font, Honeybird, and developed into a contemporary variation with three styles. Scrittura Moderna: sleek and calligraphic. A dramatic, vigorous yet elegant font, whose upright letter shapes flow into each other like molten gold. Use Moderna for marketing cosmetics and clothing, for book covers, greeting cards, wedding stationery. Scrittura Antiqua: weathered, almost grungy. A new font with an “antique” look , reminiscent of ancient parchment manuscripts. Use Antiqua for certificates, medieval banquet or wedding stationery, theatre posters and programs, and book covers. Scrittura Fantasia: magical and ghostly. A slightly distorted, evoking Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and your favorite horror movie. Use Fantasia for horror comic covers & posters, horror movie posters, CD covers, Halloween material. The font contains over 272 characters - (upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals, symbols and accented characters are present). It also includes "open-type"characters to enhance the flow of the text. It has all the accented characters used in the major European languages.

The Vtg Stencil fonts from astype are based on real world stencils from several countries. The Italian stencils that I chose as a model for this font are roughly based on classic French stencil letters. Please compare the figures (numbers) with their French counterparts. However, the Italian stencils are made with a different production technique. The design of the letters is clearly not punch-cut into the plates, maybe they are drilled, milled or etched. Details such as the serifs look bold and clumsy, and when using the stencils as they are meant, with viscous sign paint, smaller details easily fade away. So I took my freedom to design a font close to the original design but adding several typographic tweaks to let it shine, hoping to get closer to the intended design idea of these Italian stencils. Enjoy the vintage!

“The Secret Library” perfectly encapsulates the vintage scribbled italic while adding a contemporary twist. It intentionally retains inky edges in an effort to convey the feel of antiquity. This font looks great in books, illustrations, posters, and on stationery. All uppercase/lowercase letters have at least one alternative glyph.

Designed by Olivier Gourvat in December 2015, Univia Pro is a new contemporary OpenType font family with modernity and versatility in mind. Distinctive with its pleasant look and extremely modern, Univia Pro has a lot of personality mostly achieved by smooth curves and round corners that forms a very identical style of the entire family. Univia Pro is perfect both for display and text use and due to its ultra modern look, it is more than excellent for e-books, web-sites, user interface font, mobile apps etc. The Univia Pro font family is heavily equipped with OpenType features: case sensitive, scientific superiors and inferiors, standard ligatures, old style, lining figures, proportional and tabular figures, slashed zeros, stylistic sets. It also provides broad language support. The font family offers 18 variations (9 weights plus italics): Thin, Thin Italic, Ultra Light, Ultra Light Italic, Light, Light Italic Book, Book Italic, Regular, Regular Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, Black Italic, Ultra and Ultra Italic. Univia Pro supports Latin, Extended latin and Cyrillic languages.

Radiant font was designed by Robert Hunter Middleton in 1938 and first appeared with the Ludlow Typograph Company. It displays the strong stroke contrast typical of transitional antiquas but has no serifs. It mixes characteristics of the antique style with that of the sans serif and is therefore referred to as a sans serif antiqua. The font Brittanic displays similar characteristics. The slender characters with their high x-heights give Radiant font an elegant, sophisticated look. The finer weights are a good choice for short and middle length texts and the bolder weights are good for headlines.

Radiant font was designed by Robert Hunter Middleton in 1938 and first appeared with the Ludlow Typograph Company. It displays the strong stroke contrast typical of transitional antiquas but has no serifs. It mixes characteristics of the antique style with that of the sans serif and is therefore referred to as a sans serif antiqua. The font Brittanic displays similar characteristics. The slender characters with their high x-heights give Radiant font an elegant, sophisticated look. The finer weights are a good choice for short and middle length texts and the bolder weights are good for headlines.