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The Arabic Macintosh

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    An introduction to writing Arabic on the Mac

    The following is an attempt to answer questions like "how can I make my Macintosh write Arabic"; "how do I get hold of the software", and "why doesn't it work like it is supposed to?". It is thus in the format of a "Frequently Answered Questions" ("FAQ"), and I have divided it into two sections:

    Part I. How do I get going?

    Part II: My trusted old Mac just broke down and they shoved a new one under my nose, so:

    Can I make my Macintosh write Arabic, and is it expensive?

    Yes and not really respectively. The "Yes" comes on three conditions:

    * That you have a current Mac.
    * That you have "activated" the Arabic keyboard layout.
    * That you have programs which can make use of Arabic

    The first two conditions are pretty straightforward. Actually, the first is not even true; any Mac will work, but there was a short gap between 2000 and 2002 when Arabic was not part of the operating system. If you happen to have bought your Mac just then, you may have to upgrade your system software. But anything either bought or upgraded after 2002 will have Arabic already in place.

    The second means to make a trip to the settings in System preferences: Even if Arabic is installed on all Macs, most users will of course not need or want access to it, so you have tell your computer that you are one who does.

    The third condition, however, is a bit more serious: Much of the regular software you buy aimed at the US or European market will not be able to utilize the Arabic bits of your Mac. More and more do, but in particular software from Microsoft (which dominates, of course) do not. So, you will normally have to use word processors or other programs that can specifically support Arabic script. They are generally not very expensive, some even free, but you will have to make that effort (happily, web browsers are an exception, pretty much all except the one from Microsoft will now display Arabic web pages, without any action on your part).

    Still, we should not be confused about this: Arabic (and most other writings systems in the world) on the Mac is a basic part of the computer itself, it is not a specific program. Arabic consists of a set of fonts, as well as special functions that makes the text run from right to left, tabs and alignment start at the right-hand margin, etc. These fonts and functions are available to all programs on the machine. It is just that many programs cannot be bothered to avail themselves of these resources, as of course it means that they cannot "assume" for example that a tab moves the cursor rightwards. In particular, they must support some rules for non-European fonts called the "Unicode" system. And, to save money, perhaps, many cut corners and ignore all or part of this. So, we have to be a bit careful when it comes to applications. Apple's own small programs, however, of course all follow these rules and do work with Arabic.

    But the menus and everything turn into Arabic?

    No, generally not. On computers bought in the West, Arabic is normally just an extra language that is added to the English or European system. If you look in System Preferences : International, you will find an option to set Arabic as the main language, to be displayed in menus and dialog boxes of the system and programs. But that requires that the program contains such optional Arabic menus. In fact, I have not seen any program that does so, nor does any Apple programs, so this is probably not really implemented (although a few programs for the Arabic market may have translated their own menus into Arabic). Consider Arabic an added capability to your basically English / European Mac.

    I just learned the Arabic letters last week, so bear with me; it writes from right to left, right?

    That is the point, yes. If you have never written Arabic on a computer before (new student!), these are the basic features which all workable programs share:

  • Automatic context analysis: There is only one key for Arabic "b". The system automatically selects whether the isolate, initial, medial or final form of "b" is appropriate, and changes this if you e.g. add another character afterwards. Notice that only the letter value "b" is stored on disk, not the form: this is only formed dynamically on display.

  • Of course the writing direction switches automatically to go from the right when you write in Arabic. You switch to Arabic typing by choosing Arabic from a "keyboards" menu (or by pressing Command-Spacebar); the writing direction switches to right-to-left and an Arabic font is automatically selected.
    You can combine English and Arabic on any line, when you switch to English in an Arabic text, the writing direction changes automatically. It looks funny the first time you see it, but it works correctly, also if there is a line break in the middle of the "other" language. The program may also mirror tabs and indents to run from right rather than left, the programs vary in how versatile they are in such functions.

  • Many fonts, of course. In the basic package you get five or six Arabic fonts, you can buy others, both headline, text and fancy fonts, or find freeware fonts on the Net. All fonts should have the basic Persian characters in addition to Arabic, some have a wider variety of Arabic-based characters for other languages.

  • Ligatures. Some combinations of characters are given particular joint shapes (e.g. lam-mim and mim-mim are stacked vertically). It depends on the font how many ligatures are available. The selection of shapes may not be perfect -- most fonts lack e.g. the dagger alif (although there are now a couple of useable fonts that have it, see the Fonts page) -- but most of the fonts look fairly OK.

  • Numbers are inserted in the correct order; i.e. if you type 1952 (typing 1 first and 2 last), the numbers will display in this order, left to right, even within an Arabic text (as they should).

    • How do I get started with Arabic?

    If all you want to do is e.g. to read Arabic web pages, you need not do anything, except to avoid Microsoft's Explorer. All other browsers, including the Safari already on your machine, will display Arabic text automatically. (*)

    If you want to write in Arabic, you must however activate a "keyboard layout", which makes your keyboard produce Arabic characters rather than the English a-b-c. You do this by going to "System Preferences : International : Input Menu" (or "Keyboard Menu").

    There you will see a long list of keyboard layouts; scroll down until you find Arabic and check the check box beside it, then close the window.

    You will now see a "flag" or "keyboards" menu to the menu bar, with Arabic listed as an option below your national language. Choose it when you want to type Arabic, and suddenly the "a" key will give you a shin.

    There was, as I mentioned, a period between ca. 2000-2002 when Arabic was not supported (check "About this Mac" in the apple menu, if it says 10.0 or 10.1, you will find no Arabic). In that case, you must upgrade your system software. In fact, even with the newer versions, you will find that Arabic works better the higher digit you get; 10.3 is better than 10.2, and 10.4 better still.

    (*) If Safari's Arabic appears to be broken, check here.  

    What about the keyboard? Where do I get an Arabic keyboard?

    You don't need a particular Arabic piece of plastic in front of your Mac. The physical keyboard is exactly the same, whatever is painted in black on the keys - the electronics inside are identical. When we talk of "keyboards" or "keyboard layouts" we are just talking about software: These are small pieces of software that tell the computer that when I press the left-most key on the middle row, it should produce an a - if it is English - or a shin - if it is Arabic. You can even find a funny "Arabic transliterated" layout, which will produce an Arabic alif when the leftmost key on the middle row [the "a" key] is pressed. The regular Arabic keyboard layout, however, follows more or less the established Arabic typewriter standard for what keys produce what characters.

    Of course, if you do not touch-type in Arabic, you are typing more or less blindly until you get so used to this set-up that you remember that the middle row runs shin-sin-ya'-ba' etc., and you may have to take a number of trips to the Keyboard Viewer menu to see where to type (Go to Open International... in the flag menu, and then check "Keyboard Viewer", it is then added to the flag menu).

    The "transliterated" keyboard layout is called "Arabic QWERTY", and tries to follow the English keyboard: if you press the English "a" key, you get alif, "b" give ba', etc. It still requires some learning of where the emphatics and hamza etc. are, but it may be quicker to learn than the standard, unless you are familiar with that. There is also a Persian, as well as three Afghan keyboards. (For Urdu, check the Urdu on the Mac page.)

    There also exist some acetate sheets with the Arabic letters printed on them that you can glue to the keys of your physical US keyboard to help you see what to type, some addresses for such are Bilingual keyboard and Arabic keyboards (not tested by me, so buyer beware. Or you can help yourself with sellotype).

    -.-

    Normally, you switch between keyboard layouts (Arabic-English) by pressing Command and Spacebar together, or Command-Option-Spacebar if you have more than two layouts. In the latest Mac system ("Tiger" or 10.4), the new "Spotlight" search uses the same keyboard shortcut. You should therefore go to "Keyboard Shortcuts" [in System Preferences: "Keyboard & Mouse"] to change that, to make switching between scripts easier. Check both options under "Input menu".)

    Why is the Arabic icon in the menu bar sometimes grey, even after I have activated Arabic?

    Although your Macintosh has now become Arabized, not all programs are able to display Arabic, as we mentioned above. In these, you will see that the Arabic keyboard is greyed out and cannot be selected, and no Arabic fonts are listed in the Fonts menu. This may particularly be the case for older programs which are not adapted to the system called "Unicode", a standard way to handle non-European characters. The Mac bases its Arabic on Unicode, so such older programs cannot "see" the Arabic script. They can, however, still use e.g. Chinese or Japanese, as the Mac supports these languages directly, outside of Unicode. So these more remote scripts are actually more accessible than right-to-left scripts such as Hebrew and Arabic (perhaps because they represent larger markets?).

    However, the development seems clearly to be that new programs are based on Unicode, and that new versions of older programs also build this in, so that automatic support for Arabic and other right-to-left scripts will expand steadily.

    Microsoft Word does display the keyboard in the menu, because it is Unicode-based, it just does not support Arabic. Their problem is apparently that the Mac and Windows versions of Word are made from the same program code basis, and since Mac and Win use different ways of supporting right-to-left scripts, it would involve too much re-programming of the Mac version to add this. So they have made the choice of not, and probably then never, supporting Arabic on the Mac.

    What programs do work for Arabic?

    You will find more details on this on the separate pages linked below. But the lowdown is:

    -- Apple's own programs, TextEdit, Mail, Safari, etc. are fine
    -- All web browsers are fine, except Internet Explorer.
    -- For word processing, you need a program that understands Arabic: Mellel and NisusWriter Express are probably the most commonly used.
    -- For other types of programs, check case by case. The general trend is that the very simple programs often have basic support for Arabic, the very advanced may have extra features directly for us, while those in the middle more often are problematic. But, as mentioned above, Arabic support is expanding as new versions appear.
    -- As for fonts, you may want to install more than the ones that come pre-installed. There are probably a hundred-odd freeware Arabic fonts on the Net, and perhaps as many commercial ones, but there are number of caveats to be observed, see the link below for a discussion and recommendations.

    Part II: I had to get a new Mac. What is new for Arabic?

    What do I have to do to keep working in Arabic?

    If you had a Mac from, say, the 1990s, which you used for Arabic, e.g. in NisusWriter, and now have had to replace it, you will find many changes have occured. You can of course still use Arabic, but there are some issues involved. Basically, there are two options, "continuity" or "change".

    One way is to rely on what is called "Classic", to be able to use NisusWriter or other older software as before. Your new machine now runs the operating system called "OS X" ("Operating System Ten"); you will see that menus and stuff look different. Not just different, your old programs, such as NisusWriter or WinText cannot work under OS X at all. However, Apple created a utility (an "environment") called "Classic". It tricks old programs to believe it is actually the older OS 9, which they do accept. In fact, you are running a computer within a computer. It may be a bit confusing at first, but it allows you to keep working with NisusWriter or other old programs pretty much as before. There is a trick to how you install Arabic into Classic, however, Apple is not very helpful. See the separate legacy page for how this is done.

    However, Apple has now dropped this Classic option. It cannot be installed on new Macs (as of 2006). So the option of continuity through Classic - which was anyway somewhat convoluted - only exists for Macs bought before 2006, for new Macs you have instead to get used to the new options, new programs or program versions that work directly under the new OS X. This creates a certain number of issues:

    • Installing Arabic is not a problem, as you can see above: All Macs now include Arabic, you just have to make the choice to activate it.
      More

    • But you have to switch to new programs. Neither WinText nor NisusWriter, the old one, exist under OS X, although there is a new program called NisusWriter Express (same company, new program, and not as capable as old Nisus). You will find that some old programs have been upgraded to OS X, others have not, many new have come, while others that worked with Arabic in OS 9 no longer do in OS X (such as the email program Eudora, e.g.).
      More

    • Further, the way the Mac now handles non-European scripts is fundamentally different from before. Your old documents have to be converted in some way before you can use them. That may be handled automatically by the software, but you must often be aware of it. It does, however, have an advantage, in that Windows, Unix and other computer systems operate in the same way, so we can now at last exchange Arabic documents with them with no (or little) hassle. This system is called Unicode.
      More

    • Another advantage is that you also have a much wider selection of freeware Arabic fonts, both "academic" fonts that include many non-Arabic 'ajami characters, and decorative fonts of various sorts.
      More

    • On the downside, the change to Unicode has also meant that some things we took for granted is no longer possible, and we must learn some new ways.
      More

    • If you have used fonts for academic transliteration of Arabic or other scripts, there is the same plus and minus: Old fonts may not work, documents may or may not have to be converted, but when you do, they can be exchanged freely with Windows and other users. However, you can often continue using updates of the old fonts as well, if you prefer to, so that no conversion is needed.
      More -- Jaghbub users

    We will deal with each issue in greater detail, starting with the most basic one:

    What is that, "Unicode", and how does it relate to Arabic typing?

    Ah. That is a key concept when working with non-European scripts on computers these days. "Unicode" (for "Universal Character Code") is actually just an agreement between computer makers (a standard) where each character in every possible script and language in the world, dead or alive, is given a number. The computers use these numbers to identify the characters, and thus a Mac and Windows machine will agree on what should be displayed as an alif. Unicode actually does no more than that, it is not a program you can install on your machine or anything.

    However, Unicode is based on an assumption: that the computer - and the program - is able to handle large character sets, with all the 65,000 possibilities that exist. No individual font will have anywhere near so many characters (I have seen up to 51,000), but any non-European character will in this standard have a very high ID number, and the system must be able to "address" characters with such high IDs. Old Macs did not; they could only understand character IDs up to 255. Under Unicode, the IDs of the Arabic letters range between number 1570 and number 1620. So older applications simply cannot see those characters, they are beyond their horizon.

    OS 9 (and OS 8) could in theory work with Unicode, but hardly any program knew how to deal with it. Arabic and other non-European writing was normally handled differently: While Unicode has only a single character set, with every character together in sequential numbers, OS 9 could have many parallel character sets ("scripts"), English, Arabic, Hebrew, but each of them restrained to 255 ID numbers, which was ample for each one. The font you chose set the script the computer was to work in. This setup was called "WorldScript"; Classic still uses it, but not OS X.

    With OS X, Unicode was built in, and parallel scripts for Arabic and Hebrew were never made (although direct support was created for East Asian and Cyrillic, that is why these are more available than Arabic). Arabic was now only available as part of the one, huge Unicode set-up. But many OS X programs still do not understand the larger character sets, and OS X allows them to function even if they can only see the first 255 character numbers in a font. That is why older OS X programs cannot understand Arabic, while newer - those able to accept that a font may contain more than 255 character IDs - will allow Arabic to be displayed.

    It must be added, however, that Unicode support for Arabic has been a slow development in OS X. By the latest version, 10.4, we have a fairly good basis, but the Unicode "unification of everything" has meant that some functions we were used to in OS 9 cannot be done (e.g. linking a font to a keyboard layout). There is also room for improvement in the handling of fonts for Arabic. But each new version of OS X seems to bring some developments and improvements, so it is useful for Arabic users to keep informed of changes. In any case, the basic elements are now in place. The main issue now is for the actual programs - applications - to take note and implement these Arabic capabilities.

    How can I upgrade my old Arabic documents to OS X?

    As you could see from the Unicode paragraph above, OS X actually sees Arabic completely differently from OS 9, although they may use some of the same fonts. That is why opening an OS 9 or Classic document with Arabic text into an OS X program will often stubbornly display the supposed Arabic in Times, and no selecting an Arabic font for it will help: The OS X program cannot understand that the text was in another, parallel script under OS 9, and only displays the characters according to their ID numbers, which were below 255; i.e. as strange European characters. Arabic from OS 9 must therefore go through some conversion to appear properly in OS X programs.

    Happily, there are ways. One very simple one is to copy and paste through the Clipboard: Copy the text while it is displayed in an Arabic font in a window in Classic (e.g. from Nisus), and paste it into a window in an OS X program that handles Arabic (e.g. Mellel). The Mac has understood that the origin was Arabic, and pastes the correct characters in the Arabic script, and according to Unicode (and thus automatically in an Arabic font, although probably not the same Arabic font you used originally). This assumes, of course, that you still have Classic and the original application installed. If you do not, then you will have to make the OS X application you do have understand that the text is supposed to be Arabic. Some word processors let you do that, in slightly different ways:

    In NisusWriter Express 2.5, when you open an Arabic file from NisusWriter "Classic", the Arabic is correctly converted and presented, although again perhaps in a different Arabic font (or not. You will often get an error message saying that "some fonts are missing", which you can basically ignore). Such documents preserve most (but not all) of their formatting when opened in NisusWriter Express. (In Express versions before 2.5, conversion was not automatic; you had to choose "Arabic" in the Open dialog box, which you still have to for unformatted, text-only Arabic files).

    Mellel, TextEdit and other programs allow you to open Arabic text-only or RTF documents from OS 9 through a menu option. NisusWriter Classic files will thus open, but formatting is lost, unless you had saved the file in RTF format. Also, since Arabic then is set to dominate over Roman script, any Roman text outside the basic English A-Z (accented characters, smart quotes, symbols) will appear as rogue Arabic letters.

    To do this in Mellel, choose: Import: PlainText or RTF, then in the submenu Encoding, choose "Arabic (Mac)". You can also set "Arabic (Mac)" as the default for opening plain-text files (in Preferences), then Arabic will be converted correctly whenever you open an OS 9 file in Mellel.

    In TextEdit, you use the Open menu to get a similar Encoding sub-menu, and the result is the same. Here, you should choose Format: Convert to Rich Text, to be able to format the text. Again, you can set "Arabic (Mac)" as the default for opening text files. Both Mellel and TextEdit will open Nisus Classic files saved in RTF format, but TextEdit does it better, preserving non-ASCII Roman characters (while Mellel preserves footnotes).

    Of the other main text programs, NeoOffice will give you an import option for a text file containing mixed Arabic/Roman text, but not an Arabic-only file, which it bungles, nor RTF. -- Jedit X and Horuf work like TextEdit -- InDesign and Nashir convert Arabic text-only files from Classic (but not RTF) when placing into a frame -- Swift Publisher cannot open or place text files, but you can preserve RTF styles by copying through TextEdit. -- Nothing in Papyrus and AbiWord.

    I used Arabic under OS 9 and I am missing many capabilities in OS X?

    Partly because Arabic under OS X is limited by Unicode conventions, and partly because Apple had to recreate Arabic support from scratch, it seems, many things we were used to from OS 9 seem to be gone, either for the moment or premanently:
    • Fonts and keyboard used to be linked, so the application "remembered" which Arabic font I had used last when I switched to English and back. They no longer do. Some programs may find solutions for their own programs, but this is no longer a system feature. Instead, most applications will keep on in the same font when you switch keyboard, and if that font does not contain the characters of the other script - which it normally will not, of course - it will present the missing characters in the "default" fonts, Lucida Grande for English and Geeza Pro for Arabic.

    • Before, the keyboards menu was nicely ordered, with Latin scripts on top, then a line and Arabic below. Command-Spacebar switched between scripts, Command-Option-Spacebar between keyboards in the script. This is now all messed up; if you have three or four keyboard layouts visible, Arabic will probably appear in the middle somewhere, and Command-Spacebar only switches between the last two layouts used, which may or may not be Arabic and Latin (actually, that is what the documentation says it should do. What it seems to do, is to switch between the last Unicode and the last non-Unicode keyboard, or something like that). This is of course because the concept of "script" has disappeared; a keyboard can cover many scripts. Command-Option-Spacebar will circulate between all visible keyboards, so a slightly more tedious process, unless you make sure only to have two keyboard layouts in the menu.

    • We used to be able to enter numbers both left-to-right, and right-to-left (by using the number keypad). Gone. All numbers are now entered left-to-right (which is normally considered the correct way to type numbers, but still). However, Apple still does not follow the Unicode system in that Arabic-shape numbers are still logically different from and separate from English-shaped; so 1234 in an Arabic font is not the same as 1234 in an English font, nor can they be used in calculations (unless the application specifically provides for this). In OS 9 you had the option of having calculable numbers in an Arabic font. On the other hand, you can now have Persian, Sindhi and other numeral shapes alongside Arabic in the same font (if the font includes them), and a little-used Typography option even allows you to switch quickly between them.

    • Some fonts, like al-Bayan, had some special characters for decorative purposes, like [A]llah, salla Allah 'alayhi wa-sallam, etc. These are actually still there, but they have a different place in Unicode from where Bayan used to put them, so you cannot type them with the Arabic keyboard [nor are they converted when you update your documents]. However, you can find them e.g. with Character Palette (check towards the bottom of "Arabic Presentations Forms-A", or at the code FDFA, FDF2, and thereabouts).

    • Such oldies as Arabic calendar is gone, but that was more of a gimmick of limited value.

    • We are still missing support for keshida, "stretching" a word in order to present straight left-and-right margin in justified text. We used to have this in OS 9 and earlier, and without it, justified text may not print as well as it should. Some applications add this function (thus Mellel), but with mixed result. It is a key feature for text display, so hopefully it will be part of the next system update.

     

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    Last updated 21.1.06