WEFT is supposed to work only on Windows computers with Internet Explorer.  It does not work on Macs, Linux, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc. 

Even with Windows and IE, it does not always work so here is a summary of the feedback I've received on the test page, http://students.washington.edu/irina/persianword/weft.htm

WinXP with IE6.0: Weft is successful with all fonts embedding properly.

Win2000: Varying results depending on which service pack and how many updates the user has.  It has been reported to work with all fonts embedding properly  on IE6.0.

Win98. IE6.0 is required for Weft to work on Win98. However, even in these conditions, only the Koodak font will embed properly. Tahoma (at least for Persian) and Arabic Typesetting do not work. Therefore, if you decide to use Weft, obviously, the Koodak font (or other fonts by FarsiWeb) will be your best choice.

Some screenshots from Win98 with IE6.0:

Weft is not able to enforce the latest version of Tahoma with the corrected medial Yeh and so the old buggy Tahoma which came with Win98 is displayed. However, note the Latin characters, including the "H and Z with dot below"  (only available in the newer Tahoma versions) are displaying correctly.

The Koodak font is the only font from the test page which has worked successfully on Win98/IE6.0. See how the medial Yeh is displaying properly.  The Koodak font does not come with any version of Windows and in this case, the user had not installed it. Therefore, Weft was completely successful with Koodak: 

Like Tahoma, for Persian, the Arabic Typesetting font does not work with Weft on Win98/IE6.0.  Like Tahoma, it is an open-type font (although it has the extension .ttf, not .otf) however, unlike Tahoma, it did not have an earlier version which came installed on Win98. Also, like Tahoma, it has a Latin subset and that, including the "a with macron above" has worked with Weft. It is not clear why the Persian in the Arabic Typesetting font does not work with Weft.  

As you see above, the Tahoma font has kicked in and that too, at a giant size causing a formatting disaster!  Since Arabic Typesetting is a relatively smaller font than the core fonts (in fact, this font was not even designed for the web, but for printing), as you can see, the resulting line wrap results in one or two words  being stretched (kashida) to the length of an entire line. 

The Koodak font is also slightly smaller than the core fonts and similar (but not nearly so drastic) results occur when Weft has not worked with the Koodak font. Below is a shot from a Win98 with IE5.0 illustrating what happens when Weft does not work at all.  Note the system default font (Times New Roman is displaying with the buggy medial Yeh and even the Tahoma Latin subset which lacks the H and Z with dot below proves that Weft has not worked at all. Again, a minimum of IE6.0 is required for Weft to work on Win98. 

If you'd like to contribute feedback on this demo, please email: irina@u.washington.edu and be sure to say which versions both of Windows & Internet Explorer you have and if you felt the download time was longer than usual. I will summarize and post the statistics and comments as I receive them.

Questions on WEFT should be asked at the WEFT users group: http://groups.msn.com/MicrosoftWEFTuserscommunity/general.msnw

 Usage statistics on operating system and browers

For an alternative to Weft which works on all computers and browsers, see GlyphGate

The screenshots used on this page are courtesy of two generous individuals who responded to the call for feedback:  Masoud Sharbiani and AmirBehzad Eslami. A picture is worth 1000 words so thank you!!

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