I’m Khaled Hosny (خالد حسني), a type designer and software developer from Egypt. I’m also an aspiring calligrapher, amateur painter, and avid book reader.
I have been contributing to and maintaining Free Software projects since 2005. I have no formal education in design or programming. I learned everything I know through self-study and practice, and if it wasn’t for the Free Software community, I’d not have had access to the software resources to study and learn from.
I’ve been designing Arabic typefaces since 2008. I started with Amiri, which is yet my most famous work, it even has its own Wikipedia Page. I have since designed many other typefaces, like Mada, Reem Kufi, Rana Kufi, Qahiri, and Raqq. I have a few more unpublished typefaces that I hope to complete and publish one day. I started a type foundry, Alif Type, where I publish my typefaces, and many of them are also available on Google Fonts. I also do font engineering for other type foundries and designers.
I have a weak spot for mathematical typesetting, even though I don’t understand much of mathematical notation, since I studied mathematics in Arabic notation, and much of which I have since forgotten. I have worked on engineering a few math typefaces over the years, like XITS Math, Lucida Math, Libertinus Math, Nagwa TK Math, IBM Plex Math, and Noto Sans Math. I even developed a GlyphsApp plugin for developing math typefaces.
I have always had a passion for Arabic calligraphy, and I tried to self-learn calligraphy but never managed to be good at it on my own. When I got introduced to computers, and later to type design, I thought if I couldn’t master calligraphy myself, perhaps I can get the computer to do it for me.
It wasn’t until 2019 that I started to learn calligraphy the proper way at the hands of a master calligrapher. I started with various Kufic styles that are drawn with a pencil and a ruler. Later I moved to calligraphy styles that are written with a reed pen, starting with Diwani followed by Naskh.
I have contributed to many Free Software projects over the years. My contributions mostly revolve around improving the support for Arabic language and script, and text layout and font rendering in general. Projects I contributed to include Arabeyes, Gnome, GTK, Pango, Firefox, XeTeX, LuaTeX, FontForge, Emacs, Scribus, and LibreOffice. I still actively contribute to many projects like HarfBuzz, Raqm, and FontTools.
I graduated from medical school in 2010. I originally planned to practice surgery, viewing type design and software development as mere hobbies at the time. However, in 2011 I suffered an injury that left me unable to stand for extended periods of time without suffering considerable pain. I opted for working as a radiologist instead. It didn’t work out for me, and in 2014 when I had to choose between medicine and another career, I quit medicine for good.
I’m not a very social person, and I’m usually shy when meeting new people. If you see me around, feel free to say hi!