Re: General Digest, Vol 5, Issue 41

[Klaus Lagally <lagally at informatik dot uni-stuttgart dot de>]

N. Heer wrote:
> Andrea,
>
> 	You do not have to use transliterated Arabic with ArabTeX.  Klaus
> has provided scanners for Microsoft's 1256 and the ISO 8859-6 code pages.
> And perhaps by now he's added UTF-8 as well.  

Yes, UTF-8 is supported. Usage:
	\usepackage{utf8}
	\setcode{utf8}

So you can use any editor
> that allows you to type in Arabic and then add the mark-up language in
> English.  That way you won't make mistakes in transliteration which then
> show up as mistakes in Arabic.
>
> Nicholas Heer
>
> On Mon, 31 May 2004, Andrea Benazzo wrote:
> > the errors you found out in the pdf are genuine just like your thoughts: in
> > ArabTeX you write in Arabic through the traslitterated form. that way is a
> > very fast one to write in Arabic, n not to lose contact with our mother
> > tongue characters.

You have to be careful with the transliteration input, since this is not 
uniquely reversible, and you must give ArabTeX some hints in case of any 
ambiguity in the transcription. This is generally done by capital 
letters in the input, e.g. for long vowels, tanwin, and ta' marbuta. 
Examples:

	kitAbuN, maktabaTuN, maktUbiN, katabUA

Transliteration input is provided for people (like most Orientalists) 
who are accustomed to it, but cannot afford an Arabic word-processing 
package, nor a special keyboard; and who frequently need bilingual texts 
with Arabic and Western script within the same line.

> > first of all I need to thank Klaus for inventing and mantaining ArabTeX
> > because most of the pdf was made from that package. Second I must thank my
> > Arabic teacher who was very happy of my work, but who never revised it.
> > (that's why there are so many errors which I can't find out!!!!).
> > probably in the future I'll make up an english version of the course, so
> > that someone else, just like you adbulhaq, may really help me with its
> > development.

Thank you for the flowers! Your teacher's reaction is typical :-)

Klaus
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