Eureka! This is why Arabic support for lyx 1.3.2 doesn't work in my Mandrake 9.1

[Munzir Taha Obeid <munzirtaha at myrealbox dot com>]

Sometime ago, I tried to write Arabic in lyx but failed to do it. I 
asked in the lyx mailing list and Dekel Tsur, the person behind the support, 
thankfully tried to help me but we couldn't figure out why it didn't work 
for me. He checked my preferences file and the exported TeX file to no avail.

Now, after many many trials I come out to a conclusion which may reflect a bug 
somewhere in lyx, Mandrake, or pdflatex ... you decide!

Resoultion:
-------------------------
The problem is that lyx couldn't read a closing LaTeX code after an Arabic 
text.

The problem:
-------------------------
I open lyx and wrote some Arabic. View -> PDF (pdflatex) gives this error

LaTeX Error: \begin{arabtext} on input line 12 ended by \end{document}.
 \end{document}
                   
Your command was ignored.
Type  I <command> <return>  to replace it with another command,
or  <return>  to continue without it.


Not a good workaround:
--------------------------------
File -> Export -> LaTeX
If I run pdflatex on the latex file I got these errors
LaTeX Warning: Unused global option(s):
    [arabic,english].

(./newfile1.aux) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/arabtex/uxnsh.fd) . . . . / . /
##

! LaTeX Error: \begin{arabtext} on input line 10 ended by \end{document}.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...

l.13 \end{document}

?
. > [1{/usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/pdftex.map}] (./newfile1.aux)
.
.
.

(\end occurred inside a group at level 1) 
</var/lib/texmf/pk/ljfour/arabtex/xns
h14.600pk>
Output written on newfile1.pdf (1 page, 9095 bytes).
Transcript written on newfile1.log.



Why not?
-------------
The generated file contains the Arabic text plus strange arabic letters at the 
end!!!


Better Workaround:
---------------------------
Open the latex file in an editor and add a space before any closing LaTeX code 
within the \begin{arabtext} and the \end{arabtext}. I mean a space should be 
entered before \end{arabtext} and if you have any formatting say you centered 
some text you should go to the latex file and add a space before the 
\end{center} or you get errors like this:

! LaTeX Error: \begin{center} on input line 11 ended by \end{document}.


Have I missed an obvious thing?!

-- 
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_/    \ /   _\ unzir    _/ aha

Telecommunications Engineer
Linux Registered User #279362 at http://counter.li.org
CIW, ICDL, MOUS.
New Horizons CLC
Riyadh, SA