Kenneth,For Arab this is a recipe for disaster. This would work for very simple Hebrew (and maybe other RTL) texts, but not for Arab: here almost all characters have different forms depending on the position of the character (standalone, beginning, middle, end).

1. Indesign Scripts For Images

Only programs who support RTL-scripts will use the right ones in the right place. Also, cursivity is missing: the characters are not connected in the right way. And what with required ligatures?So Ana, do not try to do it this way, unless only a few simple Arab words are involved.Teus de Jong. TeusI never did anything in Arabic, and my only experience with anything MiddleEastern was a book of Hebrew poetry I did this way. Since it was poetry, Ididn't have to worry about text wrap. I guess I was imagining text suppliedin Word and just placed in Indesign.Wouldn't that solve this problem?

I mean, the different character formswould already have been chosen by the author in Word, right? Please tell memore about cursivity.isn't that more something that would be built intothe font?I don't want to persuade Ana to use the RTL script.I just want to learn.ThanksKen Benson. Kenneth,I am not pretending to be the expert on this.

But I did typeset Arab-Dutch and Dutch-Arab dictionaries (together 2200 pages). And at the moment I am typesetting a bilingial edition of Ecclesiastes: Hebrew on the left pages, Dutch translation on the right. Here are some points that are relevant:1. As I said, you can do simple Hebrew by reverting characteers. But only if you don't need diacritics and punctuation for vocalization and cantillation (as used in Biblical Hebrew).2.

A RTL-aware program decides which variant of a letter in Arab must be used at a certain point. It than can use the OT-tables to choose that variant (see 3).3.

Yes, almost all information is in the OpenType fontinfo, but the application must be able to read this info. Special tables are used to choose the right character in Arab: isol, init, medi and fina. So the text in Word (or ID ME) contains the same unicode for a character; the program chooses via OpenType info the right form. It is obvious this cannot be done if the characters are in reverse order. Also, the program decides if a character is RTL or LTR, which is very important for multilingual publication (as in this case Spanish and Arab): the program changes the text direction where needed. (From this it is obvious where this can go wrong: in places where the text changes from one language to another and a character is used which can belong to both.)4.

For cursivity the mark and pos tables are used. This makes it possible to attach characters at predefined points. Also, if Arab text is aligned, the letter spacing is not adjusted: a 'line' (kashida) is used to make the character wider.5. For characters with a lot of diacritics, lookahead tables are used, e.g. To position diacritics and cantillation marks above and below characters.

Indesign Scripts For Images

A program must be able to handle those OT-tables.Teus de Jong. A RTL-aware program decides which variant of a letter in Arab must beused at a certain point. It than can use the OT-tables to choose thatvariant (see 3).I'm probably just missing something basic, but in this case (where the useris just taking Arabic text from a Word file) wouldn't the variants alreadyhave been chosen? Isn't Word the 'RTL-aware' app here? If you copy aparagraph of Arabic text from Word and then paste it in Indesign, do you getsomething different (beside RTL going to LTR)?Ken Benson. Ken,Yes, you are missing something. Word is an RTL-aware app.

But this means only that Word chooses the right form of characters in context via the OT-table. The character itself does not change. In the text is the unicode, the Arab letter bah. Depending on the context, Word chooses the right form to display and print.A simple comparison: if you use an OpenType font with proportionally oldstyle figures in it, ID uses oldstyle figures if you choose that option from the OpenType pallette. But this does not mean it changes the character.

If you export to RTF, Word will show you just lining figures.Teus de Jong. Thanks to all of you,I´m specially grateful for your interest.I ´ve got a trial for the Middle East version for 30 days.I´ve installed the IN DESIGN ME from the website. Everything´s OK till that point.Again when I want to place the text from the Word.doc. It doesnt recognize one of the fonts in which the doent is written.The fonts are a bundle of True Type with this denomination HQPB5, HQPB1, HQPB5. They are specially used to write the Sacred texts.Please I need now a little more help to know why the Adobe In Design doesn´t recognize a True Type font or in which way I could place this text, perhaps as an image?Ana from Argentina. I've faced this problem before, but with Farsi, not Arabic. If I recall correctly, I used Pars Negar: I copied text straight out of the application and pasted into ID.

Pars Negar, and programs like it, do not rely on Uniscribe or Cooltype or whatever; they insert the correct glyphs (initial/medial/final) and then place it on the clipboard as a LTR string. So, word wrap will be broken, and each line will end with a hard return, but you won't get the problem where every single letter shows up in ID as the isolated form, or where the glyphs are pasted in reverse order.I've never used ID ME (my nonprofit can't afford it), so I can't tell you how to get your archaic font working in it. However, if it is a really old font, you might not be able to use it in ID, and finding an application like Pars Negar might do the trick. However, you'll probably have to match the characters one by one to the (wierd, archaic, proprietary) Pars Negar encoding in a font definition file. I'm an old pro at manipulating archaic font encodings, so this looks really easy to me; it might not be.If you decide to forego the ID ME route, and you need an application like the one I described, let me know; I might be able to track one down for you.

Ana,This is the most curious doents and fonts I have ever seen. In the fonts all characters are defined in the private use area.

(fontlab even crashed when I loaded one of the fonts.) All characters within a word are left-to-right, but the spaces are right-to-left. Also the paragraph direction must be right-to-left.Indesign CS ME will not place the files correctly.

However, I have found a workaround for you, but it is quite a hassle.1. Place the doent in the normal (English) Indesign.

You should see Arabic characters, but in the wrong order. Save this Indesign Doent.2. Load the doent in the ME-version of Indesign.3. Select the Arabic text.4.

Replace the spaces in the selection by right to left spaces.5. In the Paragraph palette set the paragraph with Arabic text to Right to left direction: the words are reversed now, and the text can be read.6. Right align the paragraph.This is all I can do.Teus de Jong. KenI´m just seeing your reply and your answer.There were so many messages posted all together that I ´m just seeing yours right now.First of all.1 I checked the Word file and the option: font substitution. It says that all the fonts in the doent are available, no need to substitute fonts.2- There are indeed some pink rectangles in the InDesign doent but mixed with also other strange characters.What evidences the ' dreaded pink rectangles'?The problem is only with those paragraph written in that special font, the 'HQPB4.ttf',HQPB1.ttf.These are passages of the Sacred Qur´an and we are asked to maintain the same font, not to substitute it.The rest of the doent is written in Goudy and Traditional Arabic and these paragraphs show everything in order. Dvd 800 navi software update.

I’m continuing from the previous posts about InDesign.Basically, this is all off-topic for the Ukelele group, although it did start with one user discovering that the multiple-character output he had assigned to a key in Ukelele didn’t work in Arabic script in InDesign.So far it’s not clear which version of OS and InDesign he was using.Other topics:1. InDesign support for Arabic script in general2. InDesign support for combining diacritics1. Arabic.From my experience, InDesign CS6 (standard English version) offers basic support for Arabic when using the 'Adobe world-ready paragraph composer'.This page:probably talks about InDesign CC only and also about the most recent version – it’s not specified.Anyway, the list of features suggests very good support for Arabic and Hebrew scripts.The first line on that page reads.

I don’t know about InDesign CC, but InDesign CS6 has some support for diacritical marks, but only if one assigns the 'Adobe world-ready paragraph composer' to the concerned text run.You get an idea from the attached picture.In words: the horizontal positioning looks good, but vertical positioning doesn’t work at all:Accents don’t stack and they don’t adjust to a character’s height (as in letters with ascenders or descenders, or with upper-case letters).Again: support may have improved in (recent versions of) CC.fqfon.@gmail.com18.10.17 2:55.