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I use Nisus Writer Pro to type in Arabic on my Mac, and I'm hoping that other Arabic-speaking users might be able to help me.

I have been experiencing an occasional glitch with the short vowels (harakaat) in certain combinations of letters. For example, if I try to type the word نَجَحَ ("he succeeded") with the fathas above each letter, the fatha over the first letter ( ن ) simply and inexplicably disappears. This happens regardless of which Arabic font I select.

Has anyone else had an experience like this, and have you been able to find a solution?

I copied and pasted the Arabic phrase you posted here, and these were the results I see in TextEdit (on the left) and NWP (on the right): Are the fathas correctly placed in NWP? I'm using the font Geeza Pro. If my screenshot looks correct, then perhaps the issue only occurs as you are typing in the text directly? Or perhaps it's an issue with OSX itself- what version of OSX are you using?

Wow. That is interesting. When I copy and paste the text into NW, it still has the problem. So you think it might be my version of OS X? I have version 10.5.8.

This is the result with NisusWriter Pro 2.0.1 with Mac OS 10.5.8; font is Scheherazade. No problems as far as I can see.

Hans

Actually, in that picture a 'fatha' (small hash mark) is missing above the left-most letter (this is the final letter of the word, Arabic being a right-to-left language).

In my case, strangely, it's the first (right-most) letter that won't display the fatha.

Sorry, that is the correct form of the word.

Hans

arabic type wrote:...So you think it might be my version of OS X? I have version 10.5.8.

The problem you describe happens with several fonts (when Optional Ligatures is checked), even on Lion. The affected fonts are:
Al Bayan, Baghdad, DecoType Naskh, KufiStandardGK, Nadeem.

You can uncheck Optional Ligatures in Typography to resolve the problem.

Geeza Pro is not affected. Does Geeza Pro have the problem on your System?

I don't use any of these fonts.
I mostly use Scherhazade AAT.
It is very elegant. You can download it from:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page ... s_Download

Yes, I also have the same problem with Geeza Pro.

Just today I chanced upon and downloaded the Scheheradze-AAT font (as well as Lateef-AAT) and sure enough, the problem does not occur with them.

I'm glad the Scherhazade font is working for you. As for Geeza, that is probably something Apple fixed for OSX 10.6. I recall them fixing some issues with the placement of Arabic and Hebrew combining characters around that time. It's a shame there are still some problems, even on Lion.

I want to thank everyone who responded to my post for your valuable input and insights.

I have had some other minor "bugs" in using NWP for Arabic, but I will make those the topics of separate threads.

Much appreciated.