[XeTeX] Problems in Arabic typesetting

[Jonathan Kew]

Hi John,

On 20 Feb 2008, at 7:47 pm, John Was wrote:

> Thanks for the response Jonathan
>
> I think all is in order re TeXXetState=1 and so on.  I should  
> certainly have included the tex source, which is:
>
> {\newarabic \setbox0=\lastbox \beginR \box0 \noindent \hskip - 
> \parindent
> This is from Giannakis:\par
>
> ١. قال أبو على~.~.~.  وهو [=أنبادقلس]  
> وأنكساغورس يقولان إن الموجودات واحد  
> وكثير أما  كثير فمن قبل المادة وأما  
> واحد فمن قبل أن*** الفاعل الذي يميزها  
> هو واحد وهو العقل.
> }\par
> \vfill \eject

In that fragment, at least, I don't see anything making the paragraph  
of Arabic text right-to-left. You need a \beginR *after* the  
paragraph has been started (e.g., by \noindent) and before the text.

> Interestingly, that comes out correctly in this pasted-in version  
> though in Babelpad it's showing up with the words in reverse order,  
> exactly as in the PDF.  I am wondering if there is some Word- 
> related direction instruction buried unseen, which messes things up  
> in Babelpad (and in the resultant PDF produced by XeTeX) but is  
> thrown out when I come to paste it into an e-mail.  But that seems  
> rather implausible.

True, but you could avoid the issue by attaching a (short but  
complete) sample file rather than pasting fragments into the message.

JK



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