Munzir Taha wrote (privately):
> Thanks, what I can understand now is that it's practically
> impossible to
> insert the Arabic sqrt symbol, at least up to today, isn't it?
(Sorry for sending these private message back to the Unicode Mailing List,
but people there may have more information about Arabic fonts. Your original
question was about encoding, but fonts are a distinct issue.)
Personally, I don't know a proper font for Windows. That does not mean that
it doesn't exist: as I don't speak any language written in Arabic alphabet,
I know just a few Arabic fonts.
> Also, practically-speaking characters which have the mirror
> property can't be mirrored up to now. Is it like this?
No: common characters, such as parentheses or double quotes are supported
even on my system. So, the mechanism is already in place on many systems.
The problem is now just finding a Arabic font which also handles
mathematical symbols properly. You could try seeking such a font on these
sites:
- http://www.microsoft.com/typography (about OpenType smart fonts);
- http://fonts.apple.com (about ATSUI fonts, Apple's smart fonts).
Moreover, depending on what you need to do, there are temporary ways of
obtaining the proper glyph. E.g., you can draw your own font containing just
that sign, or you could insert a bitmap in your text.
By the way, mathematics requires very complex typographical capabilities
which are only handled by specific software. E.g., the square root symbol
normally extends over the value. E.g.:
______
|/ 15+10 = 5 (Western style)
______
5 = 10+15 \| (Arabic style)
Similar layouts can only be achieved by specialized math packages. Every
package handles these things in its own way, and standardization is still at
the very beginning (for Unicode mathematics, see
<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr25/>: "Proposed Draft - PDUTR #25: Unicode
Support for Mathematics").
Good luck.
Marco
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Marco Cimarosti" <marco.cimarosti@essetre.it>
> To: "'Munzir Taha'" <munzirtaha@hotmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 3:44 PM
> Subject: RE: how can I write an arabic square root
>
>
> > > Take a look at this page
> > > http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/BidiMirroring.txt
> > > It says: "The following characters have no appropriate
> > > mirroring character
> > > ... #221A"
> >
> > Yes. And have you read the explanation at the top of the file?
> >
> > BidiMirroring.txt lists all the character which have the "mirrored"
> property
> > and, as you see, 221A is included.
> >
> > For some of these characters (especially parentheses, quotes, and
> arrow-like
> > operators) there is another Unicode character which looks
> like a mirror of
> > the first character.
> >
> > For these characters, font designers don't need to draw a special
> > right-to-left glyph, because they can reuse the
> left-to-right glyph of the
> > other characters.
> >
> > For all the other characters (including 221A), this saving cannot be
> > achieved, and font designers have to provide both the
> left-to-right and
> > right-to-left glyphs.
> >
> > The purpose of BidiMirroring.txt is showing for which pairs
> of mirrored
> > character fonts can save the two right-to-left glyphs.
> >
> > Rgds.
> > Marco
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Munzir Taha [mailto:munzirtaha@hotmail.com]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 12:56 AM
> > > To: Marco Cimarosti
> > > Subject: Re: how can I write an arabic square root
> > >
> > >
> > > Take a look at this page
> > > http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/BidiMirroring.txt
> > > It says: "The following characters have no appropriate
> > > mirroring character
> > > ... #221A"
> > > > In Unicode, there is no need for right-to-left versions of
> > > mathematical
> > > > symbols.
> > > You will find right-to-left versions of mathematical symbols.
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Marco Cimarosti" <marco.cimarosti@essetre.it>
> > > To: "'munzir taha'" <munzirtaha@hotmail.com>;
> <unicode@unicode.org>
> > > Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 9:34 PM
> > > Subject: RE: how can I write an arabic square root
> > >
> > >
> > > > Munzir Taha wrote:
> > > > > It's just a english square root symbol flipped horizontally.
> > > > > I think there should be one in the unicode, doesn't it?
> > > >
> > > > In Unicode, there is no need for right-to-left versions of
> > > mathematical
> > > > symbols. The square root character U+221A is the same for
> > > English and
> > > > Arabic.
> > > >
> > > > The trick is that this kind of characters (punctuation,
> > > operators, symbol)
> > > > have a property, called "mirrored", which causes them to be
> > > displayed with
> > > a
> > > > reversed glyph when in a right-to-left paragraph.
> > > >
> > > > This is the theory: in order to make it really happen, you
> > > should have
> > > > support for "smart fonts" (such as OpenType), and the smart
> > > font you are
> > > > using should contain proper mirrored glyphs.
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately, I don't know a single font being able to do this.
> > > >
> > > > _ Marco
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
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