Re: Right-to-left typesetting in Farsi for Context.

["John R. Culleton" <john@wexfordpress.com>]

On Tuesday 10 January 2006 10:25 am, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
> On Mon, 09 Jan 2006 16:18:54 -0700, Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> wrote:
> > John R. Culleton wrote:
> >> First I ask the question: is Context the right tool for rtl
> >> typesetting of e.g, Farsi? Second I would like a reference to the
> >> pertinent Context manual
> >> or module for such typesetting. Finally I would like to know if there
> >> is a typescript extant for
> >> Farsi (Persian) wich I believe uses the Arabic alphabet with some
> >> modifications.
> >
> > well, idris is using context for professional publications so rlt is
> > possible ...
>
> In a recent thread with Mojca I give instructions to do basic utf-8 or
> Latin-transcription Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu typesetting in ConTeXt using
> Aleph and the basic unicode fonts that came with Omega. The font is very
> basic, though. Much more advanced stuff is possible as well, using better
> fonts, and I am working on an advanced Arabic-script typesetting system
> which, while still experimental, produces some of the nicest Arabic script
> available-) (I can send you samples if you like off-list)
>
> No manuals, but go here to get a flavor of things:
>
> http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d97ost/omega-example.html
> tex/context/base/m-gamma.tex
> tex/context/base/type-omg.tex
>
> You can use whatever font your client prefers, particularly if it does not
> involve a lot of ligatures or vowels (most fonts used in Persian
> typesetting are pretty basic in this regard, with the very important
> exception of Nastaliq, which TeX/Aleph cannot do quite yet...)
>
> As soon as Giuseppe and Hans get in sync on the future direction of things
> in the internals of aleph and pdftex-) we should soon have Arabic-script
> typesetting approaching a par with the Latin. Hopefully the two projects
> will merge soon, and there has already been some movement in that
> direction. In particular, the microtypography features of pdftex may
> hopefully be extended to include, e.g., glyph substitution to get optimal
> paragraph justification (since Arabic script does not have hyphenation,
> etc....)
>
> Best
> Idris

Thanks very much. The OP is not a client but another eager TeX
novice. I relayed the information to him and he is busily
acquainting himself with the tools you mentioned. 
-- 
John Culleton
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