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

Hi, Thanks a lot for the answers, they saved me from going down abandoned paths. I have installed mkiv and have not yet figured out out how to run luatex on that attached file... but will try a bit more before asking newbie questions, I feel I should at least try to look at dome documentation before asking newbie questions : ) Burak On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 9:18 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:43:04 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

...

...

Omega is dead or nearly dead

It's dead, only the funeral and burial remain to be done ;-)

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

___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net

___________________________________________________________________________________

-- Burak Emir -- http://burak.emir.googlepages.com

Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 2:24 AM, Burak Emir wrote:

...

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the answers, they saved me from going down abandoned paths.

I have installed mkiv and have not yet figured out out how to run luatex on that attached file... but will try a bit more before asking newbie questions, I feel I should at least try to look at dome documentation before asking newbie questions : )

ConTeXt should use normally use LauTeX by itself for the file because the first line in the file is "% engine=luatex", you could call process the file with "texexec --lua myfile" and LuaTeX will be used because of the lua parameter.

or use 'context yourfile' which is independent of ruby and also faster Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Hi again, On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

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.

My luatex is not working for the moment, I am using the context minimals distribution on MacOS X. Would the old Omega way documented on that page also work with the xetex engine? Thanks + kind regards, Burak -- Burak Emir -- http://burak.emir.googlepages.com

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 10:18 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

Hi, Burak,

Hi Idris,

On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:09:14 -0600, Burak Emir wrote:

Hi again,

...

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid

...

wrote:

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.

My luatex is not working for the moment, I am using the context minimals distribution on MacOS X.

Would the old Omega way documented on that page also work with the xetex engine?

No, XeTeX does not support Omega/Aleph commands. If you find an aleph binary for Mac I guess you could try that, but don't give up on luaTeX just yet, I'm sure someone on the list will figure out what's wrong....

I did not have the intention of giving up : ) Mojca suggested I try to source in setuptex, I will try that next then. I was just waiting if somebody might reply to Jean. Let me ask another question then: once luatex works, how can I make use of the ttf font? I suppose it is not as simple as copying it in the fonts/truetype directory and running mktexlsr? I had a glance at the mfonts.pdf manual, and I already installed FontForge aka pfaedit, but I do not know yet how it all plays together. Thanks, Burak -- Burak Emir -- http://burak.emir.googlepages.com

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 10:48 PM, Burak Emir wrote:

Let me ask another question then: once luatex works, how can I make use of the ttf font? I suppose it is not as simple as copying it in the fonts/truetype directory and running mktexlsr?

Yes, you only need to copy the font to fonts/truetype or fonts/opentype (but use some subfolders) or set export OSFONTSDIR=/path/to/your/fonts and run luatoos --generate which is the mkiv equivalent of mktexlsr (not even sure if that's still needed). Afterwards, you can use the font with \font\a="font name" \a but you probably need arabic features (and high-level interface is preferred). \definefontsynonym[myfont][name:Name of Your Font][features=default] but probably not default for Arabic. I let Idris answer that question.

I had a glance at the mfonts.pdf manual, and I already installed FontForge aka pfaedit, but I do not know yet how it all plays together.

You don't need any of it. Mojca

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

it's much simpler than that ... idris can tell you .. no need for texfont etc

Thanks, all! This is great. I did not expect font handling to be so easy. Yes I was trying texfont.pl, the scary perl script. One thing I found suspicious: I tried to find out whether OSFONTSDIR supports several ':' separated directories (on Mac OS, there is /Library/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts), by setting OSFONTSDIR and rerunning luatools --generate. However, I did not see a change in the numbers of indexed files. In any case, after settings fonts up and compiling (texexec --luatex traditional_arabic-test.tex), my font is not found currently... Here is what I did, in detail

export OSFONTSDIR=/Users/buraq/Library/Fonts ls $OSFONTSDIR/arabtype.ttf /Users/buraq/Library/Fonts/arabtype.ttf luatools --generate mtxrun --script font --reload texexec --luatex traditional_arabic-test.tex ... define font | font with name arabtype is not found define font | unknown font arabtype, loading aborted ! Font \TradArabic=arabtype*test2 at 28pt not loadable: metric data not found or bad.

Is there an easy way to find out which fonts are known to the system? (after luatools --generate) Here are the relevant source lines (slightly changed from Idris' example file) \definefontfeature [test2] [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] \font \TradArabic = arabtype*test2 at 28pt kind regards, Burak -- Burak Emir -- http://burak.emir.googlepages.com

Hi there, On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 11:45 PM, Burak Emir wrote:

In any case, after settings fonts up and compiling (texexec --luatex traditional_arabic-test.tex), my font is not found currently...

Here is what I did, in detail

...

export OSFONTSDIR=/Users/buraq/Library/Fonts

This was the problem solved: the correct name of the variable was OSFONTDIR. I was delighted to find out that one can pass in a list of directory names: only one needs to use ';' (semicolon) as separator instead of colon. Burak -- Burak Emir -- http://burak.emir.googlepages.com