Forgive me if I rave over something that is very old news to most Hausa computer-users, but today I just used the abdalla font, created by Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, for the first time. I am ashamed to admit that I had not taken the time to figure out any of the Hausa fonts before–I had just lazily put an apostrophe for the hooked characters while Times New Roman font, and I was often reproved for that by Hausa speakers when they read my writing. However, recently I had some documents I had written in Hausa proofread. The friend who helped me did a fantastic job of correcting my Hausa using the Rabiat font and sent me the Rabiat font so that the fonts would print correctly. Unfortunately I had problems when the font would not show up after being turned from a Word file to a pdf, so I tried the abdalla font instead (which Prof told me would be better for pdf). It’s a beautiful font. It blends perfectly with a Times New Roman font (whereas Rabiat looks like bold wherever a transition is made from Times New Roman) and the keys are easy to remember.
So, since I didn’t find this when I googled it (I’m sure this has done many times before–but I’m redoing it for the google searches), here is a little public service announcement for those hapless researchers like myself first trying to figure out the abdalla font fingerings. (I’m sure this is unnecessary for most people in Kano using the font.)
Hooked capital D = [ (key to the right of “p”)
Hooked lower case d = ] (key to the right of “[“)
Hooked capital K = { (shift on the “[” key used for hooked D)
Hooked lower case k = } (shift on the “]” key used for hooked d)
Hooked capital B = | (shift on the “\” key to the right of the “]” key)
Hooked lower case b = ~ (shift on the “`” key to the left of the 1 key)
If you don’t have the abdalla font, you can download it at the Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo site here.
Allah ya ba da sa’a
A Tunanina... 