On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 05:58:04 -0600
Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد
That said: You could typeset both books as distinct products or components within a single project file - see page 20 of cont-eni.pdf (I once did two books this way). Then you can do cross-references between both books. IIRC you can then take the TOC in one product or component and place it in the other. So in the English book you can place the Arabic TOC and vice versa.
This raises a related, more general question on how to handle multilingual documents. The English first half, Arabic second half is just one example. There are also bilingual texts with left and right columns or facing even and odd pages. We also all know of manuals containing a succession of different languages, sometimes sharing a unique set of figures, sometimes repeating the figures (with differing captions and labels). It is not obvious how to maintain parallel texts containing identical structure in multiple languages (in multiple files?). The project/product/component mechanism can help somewhat. I also know that Thomas had written a streams module to handle the synchronization of texts. However, I am not so sure how to go about this in a real, full-fledged case with a complicated text. Presently, I maintain multiple files that I compare and edit side-by-side using a "diff" tool such as meld (gtk) or kdiff3 (kde). I am sure that other users have good or better solutions that they might want to indicate. The question is how to create a structure that is both readable and manageable? Alan