No Standard ‒ Main Points

there is no standard copy of the qurʾān.
There are 14 readings (seven recognized by all, three more, and four (or five) of contested status).
there are 14 canonical transmissions (riwājāt) (two of each of the Seven),
each of which has ways/paths (ṭuruq) and versions/faces (wuǧuh).

All of this is not our main interest, because
‒ except in the greater Maghrib, Sudan, Somalia and Yaman and among the Bohras ‒
rank and file Muslims read only one riwāja: Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim.

The second big dif­ference between copies of the qurʾān that does not inter­est us here, is the rasm: there are three main rasm au­tho­ri­ties to follow: ad-Dānī, Ibn Naǧāḥ, al-Ḫarrāz, al-Balansī and al-Ār­kātī

As far as I know most editions follow a mix of diverent authorities ‒ the Lybian Qālūn Edition (muṣḥaf al-jamāhīriya, 1987, second ed. 1989, Libyan after the death of the prophet 1399) fol­low­ing ad-Dānī being an ex­ception. Authorities in Iran and Indo­ne­sia publish lists where they follow whom, others just have their (secret) way.

What interests me is
the spelling and
the layout.
Other points are important, like the
pauses and
the divisions (juz, ḥizb, para, manzil, niṣf ...),
but I do not know enough to post about them.

There are two main spellings: western and eastern
IPak is THE eastern spelling;
Ottoman, Persian, Turk, Tartar, NeoIran, Indonesian are eastern sub-spellings.
G24 and Q52 are realisation of the western spelling, Mag being their "mother".

The main difference between West and East is the writing of long vowel.

While in the East the (short) signs are turned to make them long,

in the West a leng­then­ing vowel has to follow: either one that is part of the rasm or a small sub­stitute.










G24/Q52 differentiate between /a/ and /ā/, but not between /i/ and /ī/ when there is a yāʾ in the text.
IPak always makes the difference.
(just to make clear: in the middle column, in /hāḏā/ the dagger in IPak is a vowel sign, in Mag it is a small letter leng­thening the sign before it ‒ al­though they look the same, they are dif­ferent things)

Mag, G24, Q52 have three kinds of tanwin, Bombay instead has izhar nun, IPak, Osm ... have nothing

Maybe the most remarkable difference are the initial alif: the Africa they have ḥamza-sign or a waṣl-sign. In Asia a voyell-sign includes ḥamza, absence of all sign signifies "mute" or waṣl.

Because letters without any sign the four yāʾs in the three lines standing for ī need a sukūn not to be ignored.
all in all: a large part of the letters have a different sign in Africa and Asia.

Another differences lies in as­simila­tion: both Mag and IPak do mark assimi­la­tion, Osm, Turk, Pers, NIran do not.

While IPak has three different madd signs, Mag/G24/Q52 have only one.

The main feature of page layout is the number of lines per page.
Leaving the layout with a page for a thirtieth or sixtieth on the side
there are layouts with nine to twenty lines per page,
the berkenar with 604 pages of 15 lines being the most common
  (due to Hafiz Osman and ʿUṯmān Ṭaha).

My motivation was anger about old German orientalists calling the King Fuʾād Edition "the Standard Edition";
later I came across young orientalist calling it "CE" / "the Cairo Edition",
althought there are more than a thousand maṣāḥif printed in Cairo,
more than a hundred conceived in Cairo,
so calling one of these the "CE" is madness, ignorance, carelessness.
The only new thing about the KFE: it is type set, but offset printed;
its text is not new, but a switch.
It turns out that there are different KFEs, 27 cm high ones printed 1924, 1925, 1952, 1953 in the Survey of Egypt in Giza, later in the press of Dar al-Kutub in Gamāmīz,
and 20 cm high oneS printed in Būlāq;
there is one written by Muḥam­mad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusai­nī al-Mālikī aṣ-Ṣaʿīdī al-Ḥad­dād
and one revised under the guidance of ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ḥasan b. Ibrāhīm al-Maṣrī aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ.
The text of 1924 is history,
the text of 1952 survives in the "Shamarly" written by Muḥammad Saʿd Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaddād
and in the Ḥafṣ 604 page maṣāḥif written by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha.
The Amīriyya itself printed the text of 1952 in the large KFE printed in Gamāmīz
and the Muṣḥaf al-Azhar aš-Šarīf (with four in-between-pause-signs merged into one) printed in Būlāq;
but their small kfes have the '24 text with a few '52 changes ‒ a strange mix that stayed largely unnoticed.

Just as there are seven different KFE/kfe, there are four different UTs:
UT0 1399‒1404 with (up to) five mistakes, basically KFE II, without after­word ‒ printed in Damascus, Istanbul, Tehran
UT1 1405‒1421 without mistakes, with a dagger under hamza in 2:72, and the small sīn under ṣād elimi­nated in 8:22 ("photo­shopded") ‒ first with the 1924 after­word, later with "mostly" added ‒ printed in Madina and many places
UT2 1422‒'38 without space between words and no lead­ing bet­ween lines (written by UT in Madina) ‒ and printed in Madina
UT3 since 1438 without headers at the bottom of pages, with­out end if aya at the beginn­ing of lines, with cor­rected sequen­tial fathatan ‒ rearranged and printed in Madina

When you compare UT2 (above) with UT3 you see:
they are very similar;
but while there are small differences between the same words in UT2
the same word in UT3 is identical.

Another difference: in UT2 sometimes there is zero space between words;
that does not occur in UT3.

­‒

the Cairo Committee ‒ ha ha ha

Some time ago I started a blog against the German Orienta­list myth of the King Fuʾād Edition as The Standard: Kein Standard. I had no idea that there are scholars out­side Germany too, who ascribe this and that to this edition.
Let me admit that the edition printed 1924 in Giza, bound and blind-stamped in Būlāq "ṭabʿat al-ḥukūma al-miṣrīya sanat 1343 hijrīya" (1924/5), with­out a title on the cover, the spine, with­out a title page, is im­por­tant, but not as im­por­tant as many think and not for the reasons given.
طبعة الحكومية المصرّية
        -- . --
    ١٣٤٣ هجرّية
                سـنة

The edition is not and never was The Standard, it has not spread Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim (BTW it is not an "Azhar Edition," and no "King Farūq edition" was published in 1936 or any­time). It was not the first that pro­claims to follow the ʿUṯmānic rasm, and it is not type printed ‒ it is type­set, off­set printed (plano­graphic prin­ting just as litho­graphy). It is not the first with a post­script (Luck­now copies from the 1870s onward and the Mu­ḫalla­lātī Cairo 1890 print have post­scripts ‒ although the latter is some­times bound as pre­face ‒ the numbers on the gatherings {malā­zim, sg.: mul­zama} show that it was to be the last section).
Whatever is written by "experts," the 1924 edition was not "im­mense­ly popular": the people of Egypt always pre­ferred other editions: in the 1920s and '30s 522 pages written by Muṣṭfā Naẓīf Qadir­ghali (still reprinted in its Otto­man gestalt in the 1950s), since 1975 (till today) the Šamar­lī (as well on 522 pages), after 1976 for a decade Muṣḥaf al-Azhar aš-Šarīf (525 pages, several sizes), since 1980 editions written by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha (on 604 pages). The people of Egypt never took to the 844 pages of the "revolu­tio­nary" King Fuʾād Edition (18,5 x 26 x 5 cm). The 1924 edition was never re­printed (the 1955 Peking edition has the same text for the qur'ān and the information, but adds a title page, sup­presses the de­di­cation to the king, has different headers, different frames etc).
To understand what went on, it helps to know that Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire from January 1517 to November 1914. Soon after, the govern­ment found "faults" in Ottoman maṣā­ḥif and asked the chief qārī of Egypt to pre­pare a modern Egyptian edition; a former direc­tor of the Arabic depart­ment of the Ministry of Education and two pro­fessors from the Teachers Training Center Nāṣa­rīya (located next door) were to assist him.
It is important to note that India and the Maghreb had largely kept the qurʾān ortho­graphy of the tenth century, or they had reverted to the old spelling already sometime before.
When Hythem Sidky writes in his review article:

"the [modern] ortho­gra­phic standard of clas­sical Arabic ... charac­te­rized nearly all muṣḥafs" before 1924 (Book Review of Daniel Alan Bru­baker, Cor­rec­tions in Early Qurʾānic Manus­cripts in Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 27, 2019. p. 276),

he is com­pletely wrong: There was not a single muṣ­ḥaf written like clas­si­cal Arabic and the majo­rity (in Africa, in India, in Nusan­tara, in Central Asia) wrote accord­ing to ad-Dānī or close to his Muqniʿ. Egyptian ʿulamāʾ had been aware of the old spel­ling; books of ad-Dānī (on the rasm, on the readings, on verse num­bers) were taught and studied.
On the other hand, in Persia and (to a lesser extent) in the Otto­man Empire, the spell­ing had become closer to the "normal" spelling of Arabic ‒ this process has been labelled "clas­si­fi­cation" = writ­ing as if the qurʾān had been put on vellum by Sībawaih & Co.
1924 brought no revo­lution. Already in 1890, a muṣḥaf had been printed that was pretty close to the spel­ling of 1924 ‒ actually closer to ad-Dānī (not to his pupil Ibn Naǧaḥ, preferred in the Maghrib).
Five years later a qurʾān "bir-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī" was type printed on the margin of a com­mentary.

The scholar behind the reform Abū ʿId Riḍ­wān al-Muḫalla­lātī had died the year before, but the makers of the King Fuʾād Edition pay tribute to him.
In 1930 Gotthelf Bergsträßer met Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Mālikī aṣ-Ṣaʿīdī al-Ḥaddād (and his suc­ces­sor ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ḥasan b. Ibrāhīm al-Maṣrī aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ d.1380/ 1961). In "Die Koran­lesung in Kairo" (Der Islam XX, 1932. p. 5) he writes:

Quelle für diesen Konsonanten­text sind natürlich nicht Koran­hand­schriften, sondern die Literatur über ihn; er ist also eine Rekon­struk­tion, das Ergeb­nis einer Um­schrei­bung des üb­lichen Kon­sonan­ten­textes in die alte Ortho­graphie nach den An­gaben der Litera­tur. Benützt ist dafür ...
of course the source for the con­sonan­tal text are not manu­scripts, but the lite­ra­ture about it; hence it is a re­con­struc­tion, the result of trans­forming the [then a.s.] common con­sonan­tal text into the old ortho­graphy ac­cording to the lite­ra­ture, fore­most Maurid aẓ-Ẓamʾān by [abu ʿAbdallāh] Muḥam­mad ibn Muḥam­mad [ibn Ibrāhīm] al-Ummawī aš-Šarīšī known as al-Ḫarrāz and its com­men­tary by ... and a further com­men­tary for the marks (ḍabṭ)

I think Bergsträßer is wrong, and Sidky is wrong, when he writes that the 1924 Gizeh print relied on rasm works. Yes, its makers write in the post­face, that they did, but I am convinced, that in practice al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddad al-Mālikī just copies a Warš muṣ­ḥaf changing it to Ḥafṣ ‒ which is easy for the chief qārī, he knows the dif­feren­ces bet­ween the two readings by heart; the pause signs are his creation, the verse numbers are Kufic based on works by aš-Šāṭibī and al-Mu­ḫalla­lātī.
Marijn van Putten recently tweeted:

The Cairo Edition clearly attempted to get to the original rasm, and was suc­cess­ful to a remark­able extent, but oc­casional­ly failed to get it right, as is clear from manu­script eviden­ce. [Some­times] Rasm works (or, at least those con­sulted by the commit­tee of the Cairo edition) con­sistent­ly get it wrong in com­parison with the actual manu­script evi­dence.

As I see it, MvP makes several mis­takes: there was no committee work; of the four editors men­tioned there was only ONE ʿālim, the others had not the slightest idea about writ­ing and read­ing a muṣ­ḥaf, they just stood for the Giza print as "govern­ment/min­istry of edu­cation muṣ­ḥaf". The editor al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād did not scruti­nize qurʾān manu­scripts, either ancient nor recent. He just adapted a Warš muṣḥaf with verse numbers according to Medina II to the trans­mis­sion of Ḥafṣ with Kūfī num­bers and his own pause signs (based on the system used in the East). Al­though he writes in the after­word that the rasm is based on Ibn Najāḥ, it does not follow him all the time; I have the im­pres­sion that it is not pri­marily based on rasm works (by ad-Dānī, Ibn Najāḥ, al-Ḫar­rāz, aš-Šā­ṭibī, al-Saḫāwī or al-Murādī al-Balansī, nor the Indian al-Arkātī) but on a con­tem­porary muṣ­ḥaf.
I go further: al-Ḥaddād was not even aware of the "Ḥijāzī" manu­scripts. He didn't "get it wrong", because he did not try to do what MvP thinks he tried. He assumed that the Maġribī scholars had pre­served the ʿUṯmānic rasm.

Don't get me wrong. I am contra­dicting PvM not because he is parti­cularly stupid, but because he is especially important. Whereas most scholars are just Nöldeke IV or Spitalerin 1.6 (or try to become those), MvP prepares new paths.

But MvP's "The Cairo Edition" (and Sidky's "CE") is stupidity pure:
There are more than a thousand Cairo editions, but the King Fuʾād / Survey Authority Edition is a Giza edition, not Cairo.
Marijn van Putten and Hythem Sidky are not stupid, they are just like the people of Tiznit, who call Duc Anh Vu, the only Vietnamese in town, "Chinese", they do not know from which city he is, they do not need to know, "Asia some­thing" is good enough for them. Experts in early qur­anic frag­ments do not have to visit the hun­dreds of book­shops in Cairo, Karachi or Jakarta ‒ but still    it would be nice if they stopped calling Duc Anh Vu "Chinese" (or the King Fuʾād Edition "CE") ‒ he/it is not.

Came across a quote by Martha C. Nussbaum, an excellent philosopher and essayist, referring to Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini as "the Ayatollah," because she does not know that there are more than 5000 Ayatollahs in Iran. It seems that some do not know that there are more than a thousand Cairo editions ‒ or they just don't care.