Arabic, like many non-Latin languages, is not easy to compose. In addition to the fact that it reads from right to left, there are many other rules of composition. For example, hyphenation is not allowed in Arabic and, like German, some letter shapes change depending on where they are in a word. There are numerous ligatures in Arabic (they are used far more frequently than in Latin languages), and some ligatures are composed of three characters. In addition, like Hebrew, Arabic script can be written with and without vowels. In Arabic, vowels appear above and below character shapes and they can be on multiple levels. To accommodate certain line widths and the unacceptability of hyphenation, a Kashida or extension (almost the opposite of a ligature) is used to extend characters according to a specific set of rules. The connections between individual characters are extremely important; therefore, functions like kerning need to be specific to character shapes. In addition, since individual characters cannot stand alone, there is no such thing as a dropped cap.

 

The Arabic XT Xtension provides a number of features to make these and other intricacies of Arabic typography more automated and accessible. The user can designate any Xpress box as an Arabic box (or a Latin box in multilingual pages). Then that box can be filled with text and resized, or have colored backgrounds and blends applied, etc., as any other Xpress box.

 

The Arabic XT Xtension includes an advanced Kashida algorithm based on Arabic character rules to determine automatically the length of a Kashida that spaces out a line. Users can turn Kashidas on or off in both the display (since they could be time consuming to generate or difficult to read on the display) and in printed output.

 

The software also provides automatic multilevel vowel capabilities based on the height of characters. Alternatively users can specify the height of the vowels both above and below characters.

 

Instead of generating a dropped cap as would be used in a Latin language, Arabic XT can automatically generate a “dropped word” at the beginning of a paragraph and fit whatever number of lines are required flush right to that word. It also supports an advanced set of ligatures.

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Topic 176490 updated on 24-May-04 Topic URL: http://www.qppsupport.net/webhelp/index.html?arabictypography.htm