Re: [NTG-context] typesetting Arabic today

Hi, Somehow, the original post from Burak never made it to my mailbox, strange... Anyway: On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:29:32 -0600, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 6:31 PM, Burak Emir wrote:

...

Hi,

First of all, I'd wish to express my thanks to the makers of and contributors to ConTeXt - it is quite a pleasure to use so far.

Now for my concern: I want to typeset Arabic.

What would I use?

luaTeX and mkiv. XeTeX is there but stick with luaTeX if possible.

...

I am aware of ArabTex, I haven't yet tried Omega... however, I followed some presentations for LuaTeX and typesetting Arabic was mentioned there as motivation. This is how I got to ConTeXt in the first place.

Omega is dead or nearly dead and part of the code is integrated in LuaTeX.

...

Trying the documentation, I ended up on the following page which says "TODO" http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Arabic_and_Hebrew

http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Aleph_Guide was once the main guide. Aleph was a merge of etex and Omega, succeeded by luatex. You can still use the old Omega way of doing things in luatex -- as explained in that guide, but it's better to use the new mechanism and opentype fonts.

...

I also searched mail archives, but the mails I found on this subject were from 2003, so I thought it is worth probing for an update.

I should write one; will put this on the todo list...

...

Any news or hints appreciated.

The MkIV manual [1] has a section about arabic, you try the following code with LuaTeX or XeTeX (should work).

XeTeX is there but stick with luaTeX if possible.

\definefontfeature [arab-default] [mode=node,language=dflt,script=arab, init=yes,medi=yes,fina=yes,isol=yes, liga=yes,dlig=yes,rlig=yes,clig=yes, mark=yes,mkmk=yes,kern=yes,curs=yes]

\definefont[ArabFont][arabtype*arab-default at 18pt]

\starttext

Normal text.

{\ArabFont Your arabic text.}

\stoptext

This example misses the direction parameters. Try the attached file. If you are on XP then the Traditional Arabic font is already on your system. You will notice that vowels do not work well with Traditional Arabic. Uncomment the line %\font \TradArabic = arabtype*test at 28pt and see the difference (arabtype comes with vista but you can google and download it). The problem is that Uniscribe has text-processing info that is not in Traditional Arabic font, and that font was designed for Windows systems only. Eventually we will be able to oveload OpenType features to correct this kind of (mis)behavior. Note also that you may only use utf-8, not Windows-1256 etc! Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shi`i Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523