Yeah I too am surprised at how often the alphabet is ignored or dismissed in these comparisons. Not only for printing but also for the development of the computer.
I havne't seen a good analysis of this but I wonder how much the impact of literacy has on the demand for books. Now in the Middle Ages in Europe, literacy wasn't universal. The monastic class, clergy, the nobility and certain professions (eg merchants) were likely literate but less so the general population.
A simpler and more phonetic alphabet clearly impacts literacy. Post-1929 Turkey is good evidence of this (where Turkish switched from the Arabic alphabet to what they use today).
Chinese is notoriously difficult to learn to read and write. Is it possible that lower literacy reduced the demand for printed works? Was literacy in China actually lower than in European countries 500-1000 years ago? I have no idea but it's an interesting thought.
Fun fact, you used to need a dedicated hardware to print Chinese character on screen before personal computer have enough memory and storage space to fit every characters in.
Arabic is cursive and usually but doesn't necessarily skip vowels in written form. A lot of Arabic words have the same 3 letter root (eg IIRC ktb for "book", "librarian" and others) and they're all written the same if vowels are omitted so you have to discern the meaning in context. Plus it has gender and case. Plus Modern Standard Arabic ("MSA") differs a lot from colloquial Arabic.
So there is a lot of inherent complexity in Arabic.
From a typesetting POV (both for the printed press and computers), Arabic's cursive nature is more difficult because the letters need to connect and the shapes can vary depending on what's next to them.
I havne't seen a good analysis of this but I wonder how much the impact of literacy has on the demand for books. Now in the Middle Ages in Europe, literacy wasn't universal. The monastic class, clergy, the nobility and certain professions (eg merchants) were likely literate but less so the general population.
A simpler and more phonetic alphabet clearly impacts literacy. Post-1929 Turkey is good evidence of this (where Turkish switched from the Arabic alphabet to what they use today).
Chinese is notoriously difficult to learn to read and write. Is it possible that lower literacy reduced the demand for printed works? Was literacy in China actually lower than in European countries 500-1000 years ago? I have no idea but it's an interesting thought.