Hi Jon,
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 14:48:32 -0700, Jon Crump
Dear all,
I'm gradually getting my head around using ConTeXt to typeset texts marked up in TEI/XML. I'm trying to typeset an English/Arabic text and I keep breaking my teeth on the Arabic. I'm trying to do what I can with the macTeX 2010 distribution, but the documentation on the conTeXt wiki has me confused. The amount I don't know about TeX is truly daunting, but clearly there are some basic things about font management that I don't understand.
In this case it's not the font management, at least not yet ...
I thought I had found a minimal example in http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Arabic_and_Hebrew that I could use as a starting point. After saving it locally as ara-sty.tex I tried to typeset:
% engine=luatex \environment ara-sty \starttext \setarabic
أهلا بالعالم! \stoptext
a PDF was produced but it contained no text save for !. Among the things that conTeXt told me was:
!define font : font with name arabtype is not found !define font : unknown font arabtype, loading aborted !define font : unable to define arabtype as \*Arabic20ptrmtf*
Where should I look for this font? Where is conTeXt looking for it? If I were to find it, where should I put it?
arabtype is a windows font. It's free-beer with windows but try a search or two and you may find it stand-alone somewhere...
I gather that fonts on my system can be used, but font metric files for them have to be generated. How to do that?
Thankfully, with MkIV one [thankfully] no longer needs to concern oneself with metric files
Apologies for the unfocused tyro questions, but the TeX world has become so much larger than it was when I last used it that I feel quite at sea with all the available documentation.
NP, and that page needs updating anyway. For example, forget about \setcharactermirroring[1] and use \setupdirections[bidi=global] or \setupdirections[bidi=local] as needed. And no need for % engine=luatex Right now you need a font. Try the free and unicode-complete scheherezade from SIL and replace [name:arabtype] with [name:scheherezade] or whatever the exact font name is. There is an modified version of scheherezade for TeX distros (Khaled and I played with it once upon a time) but I don't know where it is at the moment, as it's been ages since I worked on it. I thought it was part of the ConTeXt distro already but I could not find it. I'll check into it later. Khaled, do you have that modified scheherezade somewhere? There is a simpler way to approach this, I'll try to post an example in the coming days. Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shīʿī Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523