Re: Arabic, cream/vim and latex

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Talal Al-Azem <talazem at gmx dot net> wrote:
> I hope you don't mind my emailing you... I saw your address through searches
> on the web for an Arabic unicode text program.

In the future do please mail one of Arabeyes.org's mailing-lists [1]
(appropriately) instead.

> I am looking to work with LaTeX, and was looking for a text editor that was
> "Latex" ready, if you will (meaning, the commands are highlighted, ways
> to compile, etc), but also utf-8, since I want to work with ArabTex.

I've never used latex, but I'm posting this reply to arabeyes' "general"
mailing-list in hopes of having someone in the know shed some light on
this issue (I highly suggest you either subscribe to the list and/or read
the archives regularly).

> I saw some of your posts back from 3 or 4 years ago, and decided to try
> cream and vim.
> 
> So I have a question (or two):
> 
> 1. I got the arabic working, except the letters are not connecting... i.e.
> the lam is separate from the ha' that comes after it, the ha' from the
> following mim, etc.  When I copied it into another text editor, however, it
> showed up fine.  I am assuming that it has something to do with the screen
> config for the program, but I am not very adept at things like this (I am
> just getting into Latex, and am more or less an end-user).  How can this be
> fixed?  I am running win xp sp2.

I don't know much about windows (of any kind), you might want to touch
base with the cream porter to see if he can display arabic properly.
My guess is that this is related to windows somehow or its setup.

> 2. Do you have any suggestions for a full Unicode compliant Latex editor?
> I am finding it hard to believe that there is not a single one out there on
> windows.

There are plenty (keep in mind that Arabeyes is an open source linux/unix
project, so you might not get the help you seek regarding windows) such as,

 jedit (java) - http://jedit.sf.net
 unipad       - http://www.unipad.org
 babelpad     - http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html

BTW: with regard to Arabic try to stick to the UTF-8 encoding (and not
     window's CP-1256) at all times.

> Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you for your time, in advance.

Talal, do please send strict ASCII emails (no fancy html or weird characters)
and consider seriously looking into cgywin (http://cygwin.com) it is much
simpler than you can imagine to at least give you a linux-like shell within
windows.

[1] http://www.arabeyes.org/mailinglists.php

Salam.

 - Nadim



		
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