Dear ConTeXtnicians,
There are two small features which will make Arabic work in ConTeXt easier:
1. A 14pt option for the body font. The maximum limit of 12 pt in Latin script is too
limiting. Note that the size range for Arabic is higher than Latin; text is usually
set as high as 14 pt (even higher
occasionally), while sizes below 8pt is rare (Arabic is not as readable as Latin at
very small sizes). When mixing Latin and Arabic this becomes an important issue as
well;
2. macros like \showbodyfont and \showbodyfontenvironment are apparently done entirely
in whatever font is selected at the point one of them is called. This does not work
for Arabic, which
transcribes all of the information printed by the macros into Arabic characters, which
is entirely meaningless. Can these macros be given the option of printing out the font
name and other information
in a roman font (except for the actual font sample of course). That is, the Arabic
font would only be called to print out sample Arabic characters. The <Ag> also needs
to be changed, since the <g>
especially does not occur in the Arabic transcription. Something like <{.t}{j}> would
work fine (the braces break contextual analysis so u get stand alone letters; the dot
before the <t> is intentional). I
_could_ modify the macros myself but I presume that as ConTeXt gets used by other
non-Latin scripts this problem will arise again so a general solution is needed.
Best wishes
Idris
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Dr. Idris Samawi Hamid
Depatment of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80526
