http://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2007/09/17/using-arabic-in-indesign-without-indesign-me/

[andrewheiss]

Using Arabic in InDesign without InDesign ME
http://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2007/09/17/using-arabic-in-indesign-without-indesign-me/

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by David Blatner on 2009-03-08 18:15:24

Andrew, if you are using CS4, I would definitely check out the two
plug-ins listed here:
[http://indesignsecrets.com/...](http://indesignsecrets.com/a-modern-day-chanukah-miracle-right-to-left-language-features-come-to-life-in-indesign-cs4.php "http://indesignsecrets.com/a-modern-day-chanukah-miracle-right-to-left-language-features-come-to-life-in-indesign-cs4.php")

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-03-08 18:21:46

Rats! I'm still on CS3 since my current school apparently doesn't
offer education discounts (probably since I'm in Egypt now...)

I'll definitely keep that in mind for when I get CS4 or 5. Maybe ان شاء
الله someday they can get rid of InDesign ME completely...

Thanks for the link!

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Ahmed Samy on 2009-03-29 22:26:53

Andrew, I haven't yet tried this in indesign, but only yesterday I
found one way that works in illustrator and would save you writing
backwards.

Write whatever text you want in word, use a font that has no
restrictions, convert to pdf (Traditional & Simple Arabic don't convert
to pdf), open illustrator and select a new page, drag the pdf file from
where ever it is into the new empty page, the text should appear perfect
but you can't edit, if you embed the text, you might get some rubbish
(also if you open the pdf directly into illustrator it goes bad, so you
have to drag it into an existing new page), so the best option is to go
to Menu: Object, and select Flatten Transparency, in Raster/Vector
Balance select 100% vector, and check the boxes where it says convert
all text and strokes to outlines.

From there you will have to treat the text as an image, so you need to
do all the editing in word first.

It works on CS3 and of course on CS4.
Unfortunately I haven't got a mac, and I'm doing this on windows xp

How do you like Egypt so far?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-03-29 22:45:52

@Ahmed - That's a brilliant tip! I hadn't thought of making the text
in an Arabic-enabled program and using the pdf to make vectors. That's
so cool!

Unfortunately Word '08 for Mac OSX doesn't handle Arabic. OpenOffice
does, though. Phew.

Thanks!

وباحب مصر كتير :)

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Ahmed Samy on 2009-03-29 23:08:21

You are welcome :)

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by mj on 2009-03-30 22:07:40

I'm using ID CS4 and even though I click on certain ligatures in the
glyphs panel, they show up as the single Arabic letter. Is there any
preferences I have to change to make them show up correctly?

(I don't have the Microsoft Arabic typesetting font). I tried using
Adobe Arabic, Geeza Pro, etc, but none of them work. Any ideas?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-04-03 18:59:26

InDesign displays grouped glyphs depending on the structure of the font.
Arabic Typesetting is very well made and the glyphs are grouped inside
the structure of the font (I think).

Other fonts like Geeza, etc., don't group their glyphs with the same
precision, making the hunting and pecking work a lot more tedious,
unfortunately.

If you own Office 2007 you can copy the font over to your Mac (I think
that might be legal...) and use it for "typing" your text faster.
Once the text is in you should be able to change the font to something
else and everything should still be connected.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Heroes And Horses on 2009-11-25 01:09:19

Heroes and Horses the old arabic glyphs. Thanx for the link!

\

Marhuuba

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Mira on 2011-08-16 23:29:22

[http://www.arabic-keyboard....](http://www.arabic-keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/ "http://www.arabic-keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/") 
should work for you guys too i believe!

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Colleen on 2012-05-16 21:57:59

I was having this problem and the alternate glyphs were not working for
me. Since I had just two words to translate I ended up copying and
pasting from Google Translate into TextEdit (on my Mac), enlarging the
font to 200 points, saving a PDF of the file, opening it in Illustrator
(which automatically outlined the Arabic font for me) and saving the
Illustrator file to place in InDesign as a graphic.

Worked good enough for what I needed.