Arabic "specials" on the keyboard of NRP

[Orientalist]

My questions seems to have no end, I am sorry. I think Hamid will help me again in the following issue:

I am editing and writing Arabic classical text , so I need of course the so-called "tasliya" in the usual printed form but not as: صلى الله عليه وسلم and also the tardiya but not as رضي الله عنه . Both have a special printed form: I had the first one here: # (arabic keyboard I have used for years. on number 3); I never had the second one. Both are only one single button.

I still did not find the transcription of Arabic in Roman characters. But never mind, after tomorrow I am on holidays and thus I will not disturb you with further questions.

Orientalist

[Hamid]

Copy and paste these two invocations (taṣliya and tarḍiya) in NWP in an Arabic file and see if they appear correctly:

ؓ
ﷺ

Not all Arabic fonts have these as characters and in fonts which do have them, their appearance varies. Here is how they appear on my Mac (size exaggerated):

tasliyatardiya.png (12.05 KiB) Viewed 14921 times

The forms shown here are in PDMS Saleem Quran Font which you can download free:
http://www.pakdata.com/products/arabic-font-download

I normally use Scheherazade-AAT but for these two invocations I use PDMS Saleem Quran Font in character style.
You can set up QuickFix abbreviations to obtain those characters.

[Hamid]

[...]
I still did not find the transcription of Arabic in Roman characters. But never mind, after tomorrow I am on holidays and thus I will not disturb you with further questions.

Orientalist

Uncommon characters used for transcription won’t be found your keyboard layout. A keyboard layout available on the system that you can use is the U. S. Extended keyboard layout. Special characters are obtained by pressing a key with the alt (Option) key followed by the character you want, for example alt-x gives dot under characters, so if you want a ‘d’ with dot below, press alt-x followed by d. Other examples:

alt-x gives dot under characters:
Ḍ ḍ Ḥ ḥ Ḳ ḳ Ṣ ṣ Ṭ ṭ Ẓ ẓ

alt-a gives letters with macron:
Ā ā Ī ī Ū ū

alt-v gives letters with caron:
Ǧ ǧ Š š

alt-h gives letters with macron below:
H̱ ẖ Ḵ ḵ

alt-w gives letters with dot above:
Ṡ ṡ

etc.

[Orientalist]

Sorry, I forgot to ask you about the so-called Uthmani-script for the Qur'an which is used now almost in all new editions of Arabic texts. If qur'anic sections appear in the text, you copy only these parts from the complete Qur'an into your text. I have it only for Windows.

[Orientalist]

thanks - I will try it with the dots...

[Hamid]

Sorry, I forgot to ask you about the so-called Uthmani-script for the Qur'an which is used now almost in all new editions of Arabic texts. If qur'anic sections appear in the text, you copy only these parts from the complete Qur'an into your text. I have it only for Windows.

Download Zekr:
http://zekr.org/quran/en/quran-for-mac

[Orientalist]

Writing the uncommon characters is very complicated and laborious. Writing with a german keyboard I need ö ü ä etc. so I have to change all the time to the US extended and back to German etc. Sometimes you have to write 10-20 lines in transcription - so it takes ages!


As I mentioned before I had a "home-made" transcription for Arabic only, it is still good in Nisus 6.5 for me, but only there. I called it "Arab Times" and "Arab Garamond". I have used the first one. This transcription has been created with my advise within a week!

So I made a list for the consonants and the three long vowels. a "g" with a dot above is missing. And the h with a ˇ but bezond the h and other waz around is missing also *it is the kh in the English transcriptions.

I iwould be therefore a good idea to create international used charakters for the major scripts (and languages) by Nisus. It can not be so difficult, I think.

[martin]

Writing the uncommon characters is very complicated and laborious. Writing with a german keyboard I need ö ü ä etc.

You can create a character with an umlaut using the normal (or extended) US keyboard layout. Just type Option + "U", which creates a combining umlaut, and then the normal letter afterwards.

I have to change all the time to the US extended and back to German etc. Sometimes you have to write 10-20 lines in transcription - so it takes ages!

The best would be for you to create keyboard shortcuts that toggle/switch the language in Nisus Writer, which can then automatically change your keyboard layout (if you have configured your Nisus Writer Language preferences accordingly).

I iwould be therefore a good idea to create international used charakters for the major scripts (and languages) by Nisus. It can not be so difficult, I think.

For some exotic characters a list might be good, but if the character is used often enough during typing, it's best to learn how to create the character using keyboard layouts.

[Kino]

a "g" with a dot above is missing. And the h with a ˇ but bezond the h and other waz around is missing

Using U.S. Extended keyboard layout . . .

• hit option-b (dead key), then hit h and you get ḫ
• hit option-b (dead key), then hit H and you get Ḫ
• hit option-w (dead key), then hit g and you get ġ
• hit option-w (dead key), then hit G and you get Ġ

as shown by Keyboard Viewer (System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources in Snow Leopard).

USExt1.png (76.28 KiB) Viewed 14842 times

USExt2.png (85.17 KiB) Viewed 14841 times

USExt3.png (85.18 KiB) Viewed 14842 times

If you find it tedious to switch between German keyboard layout and U.S. Extended, it would be a good idea to create your own keyboard layout, German Extended or something alike, with Ukelele (free).
http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

[Orientalist]

@Hamid: as to the Quranic characters I did not see any Uthmani.
I also asked in an Arabic forum but in vain:
http://www.macarabia.net/threads/30316- ... 9%86%D9%8A

Best

Orientalist

[Hamid]

King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex (KFGQPC) recently released a new version (0.08) of its Uthman Taha Naskh OpenType Arabic font:

http://fonts.qurancomplex.gov.sa/

You may want to try it to see if it appears all right.

[Orientalist]

Yes, I have heard about it. As far as I know it does not work on the Mac. But I will check it again. Thanks!

[Hamid]

Uthman Taha Naskh OpenType Arabic font does work my Mac (Snow Leopard 10.6.4).

[Orientalist]

http://www.qurancomplex.org/MaterialCMS ... tMenu=true

see last line after the red one. Have you a special link to Taha Uthmans Quran?

[Hamid]

http://www.qurancomplex.org/MaterialCMS ... tMenu=true

see last line after the red one. Have you a special link to Taha Uthmans Quran?

The link to the muṣḥaf is on the same page. It is hidden under هنا
The programme works on Windows only.
It has more than 600 font files (TTF) which have to be built on Windows .