[XeTeX] arabic

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/4/4 Jean-Louis Cordonnier <jlcord2 at wanadoo.fr>:
> I want to use arabxetex (or with latex) to learn arabic language.
> (So I can swith voyels on or off)
> And I dont know how to type it easily on my french keyboard.
> I am not convinced by yudit.
> Another solution ?
>
ArabXeTeX is a useful tool, mainly for European users. Typing directly
in UTF8 brings a few problems:

1. The keyboard layout. We Europeans know where e.g. b occurs on the
keyboard, but do we know where to find ب? There is a phonetic keyboard
for Urdu but I do not know whether such keyboard is available for
Arabic.

2. Combination of RTL and LTR texts. You have to mix RTL Arabic with
TeX sequences that are LTR. Not every text editor can cope with it.
Even typing the single ب character in the email requires a trick,
otherwise the editor will be confused. There is a package for Persian
(I forgot the name) where the primitives and macros are translated
into Persian. For instance, the package uses \فلم instead of \font.
(As I see, the Persian command is not displayed properly in my
firefox.) This solves the problem because everything is RTL

ArabXeTeX solves both these problems. You can find the characters and
everything is LTR. The disadvantage is that finding a misprint in the
source text is more difficult, you must know the transliteration, you
must be able to convert the displayed text into the transliteration.

And one off-topic: yous should accustom to non-vocalized text as soon
as possible. I do not know Arabic but I lear Urdu and I have never
read vocalized text. Even words in the Urdu-Hindi dictionary
(published and printed in India) are not vocalized. I have various
difficulties when reading Urdu but missing vocalization is not a
problem at all.

> Jean-Louis
>
> Le 03/04/2012 09:08, Kamal Abdali a écrit :
>> With XeTeX, there seems less need of language-specific packages
>> because the characters of various alphabets can be directly typed. So
>> this produces the same output as Nathan's program:
>>
>> \documentclass[12pt]{article}
>> \usepackage{fontspec}
>> \newfontfamily\A[Script=Arabic,Scale=1.4,WordSpace=2]{Amiri} %
>> Scheherazade
>>
>> \begin{document}
>> \begin{tabular}{c c}
>> {\A
>> مثلث
>> } & {\A
>> ١٢٣٤
>> }
>> \end{tabular}
>>
>> \end{document}
>> =====================
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 11:15, Nathan Sidoli <nathan.sidoli at utoronto.ca
>> <mailto:nathan.sidoli at utoronto.ca>> wrote:
>>
>>     This works for me:
>>     ------
>>     \documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
>>
>>     \usepackage{fontspec}
>>
>>     \usepackage[novoc,fdf2noalif]{arabxetex} %
>>     \newfontfamily\arabicfont[Script=Arabic,Scale=1.4,WordSpace=2]{Amiri}
>>     % Scheherazade
>>     \newcommand{\A}{\textarabic} % Tag for all Arabic text
>>
>>     \begin{document}
>>
>>     \begin{tabular}{c c}
>>     {\A{m_tl_t}} & {\A{1234}}
>>     \end{tabular}
>>
>>     \end{document}
>>     --------
>>
>>
>>
>>     On 12/04/01 23:37, Jean-Louis Cordonnier wrote:
>>
>>         My tex file works properly with text only but gives an error
>>         if I want
>>         to use tabular :
>>
>>         \begin{tabular}[l]
>>         \textarab[voc]{`arabI}
>>         \end{tabular}
>>
>>
>>         Le 18/01/2012 18:55, Zdenek Wagner a écrit :
>>
>>             2012/1/18 Jean-Louis Cordonnier<jlcord2 at wanadoo.fr
>>             <mailto:jlcord2 at wanadoo.fr>>:
>>
>>                 I try to write a few word in arabic ;
>>                 I get this error message :
>>                 Package bidi Error: Oops! you have loaded package
>>                 xunicode before bidi
>>                 packag
>>                 e. Please load package xunicode after bidi package,
>>                 and then try to run
>>                 xelatex
>>                 on your document again.
>>
>>             Load arabxetex before xltxtra. Arabxetex loads bidi,
>>             xltxtra loads xunicode.
>>
>>                 I dont understand why (where in bidi documentation ?)
>>
>>                 My file
>>
>>                 |\documentclass{article}
>>                 \usepackage{xltxtra}
>>                 \newfontfamily{\arabicfont}[Script=Arabic,Scale=1.5]{Traditional
>>                 Arabic}
>>                 \usepackage{arabxetex}
>>
>>                 \begin{document}
>>                 \section{\textarab[utf]{العربية}}
>>                 \textarab[utf]{السلم عليكم و رحمت الله و بركته}
>>
>>                 \section{Legacy syntax}
>>                 When he goes---``Salamun alaykum!''\\
>>                 She replies—“Wa alaykumus-salam, dear!”
>>                 \end{document}|
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz