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I need to use parentheses in writing right-to-left (Arabic) text. I have just about managed to get the 1st bracket to the right-hand margin, though how I did it I am by no means sure, but the closing bracket refuses to go anywhere except to the right-hand margin. What am I doing wrong ?

paieye wrote:I need to use parentheses in writing right-to-left (Arabic) text. I have just about managed to get the 1st bracket to the right-hand margin, though how I did it I am by no means sure, but the closing bracket refuses to go anywhere except to the right-hand margin. What am I doing wrong ?

payee, I'm not clear what it is you need to do -- do you want the parentheses on the right and left margins independent of the text?

Perhaps you could send us a small example.

Janet

Janet -- Thank you for answering. Suppose that my Arabic sentence is عادِلٌ وَحُسَينٌ صَدِيَقانِ, and that I want to put it into parentheses. As I explained, using Mellel I can just about manage to get the opening bracket to the right of that sentence -- bearing in mind that Arabic is written right-to-left -- but I cannot for the life of me get the closing bracket to go anywhere but also to the right of the sentence. I ought perhaps not to have mentioned the right margin, I said that only because an Arabic sentence does of course begin at the right margin.

paieye

paieye wrote:Janet -- Thank you for answering. Suppose that my Arabic sentence is عادِلٌ وَحُسَينٌ صَدِيَقانِ, and that I want to put it into parentheses. As I explained, using Mellel I can just about manage to get the opening bracket to the right of that sentence -- bearing in mind that Arabic is written right-to-left -- but I cannot for the life of me get the closing bracket to go anywhere but also to the right of the sentence. I ought perhaps not to have mentioned the right margin, I said that only because an Arabic sentence does of course begin at the right margin.

paieye

paieye, this should work exactly as it does with Hebrew, and in Hebrew I have no problem: (אין לי בעיות בעברית)
I assume you have Arabic defined as you secondary font with script=Arabic and that you switch from Latin keyboard to Arabic keyboard when you are inputting Arabic (including when you are typing the parentheses).

Note: the definition of the parentheses in right-to-left languages can be a bit confusing at first
-- the opening paren is ")" the character over the zero key
-- the closing paren is "(" the character over the 9 key
Those of us who learned to touch-type in English tend to automatically hit "(" for the opening paren and ")" for closing paren.

What is your main font -- this might be the source of the problem.

Janet

I am new to Mellel, and should welcome your guidance as to how to set up Baghdad - Arabic - Right-to-left as my secondary font. I am perfectly happy with the default settings for my ordinary work in English.

paieye

MacBook Air -- El Capitan -- Google Chrome

paieye wrote:I am new to Mellel, and should welcome your guidance as to how to set up Baghdad - Arabic - Right-to-left as my secondary font. I am perfectly happy with the default settings for my ordinary work in English.

paieye

MacBook Air -- El Capitan -- Google Chrome

First, and very important, if your default font for English is Time New Roman, STOP using it !!!
Many versions of TimesNew Roman have bugs in the right-to-left implimentation. It will seem to work just fine and then, poof, turn around and "bite" you or give troubles to a college to whom you have emailed your file.

OK, that settled, now . . .
The learning curve for Mellel is a bit steep. You have get familiar with Style Sets, but once you do, you will find using them very comfortable particularly with multi0lingual documents.

I'm in a hurry today, I'll offer a more detailed answer if I have time tomorrow, but for starters, I suggest you open the Character palette, click More and in the new window select Script = Arabic and select the font you want to use for Arabic.
Once that is done, Mellel will automatically use the English font when you are in the English keyboard and the Arabic font when you are in the Arabic keyboard. [They can be the same font, by the way]
There is also the issue of page orientation [right-to-left/left-to-right], but we'll talk about that tomorrow

Janet

Thank you, Janet, very helpful.

paieye

Done it ! Many thanks, I could not have managed without your help.

paieye

Well done!

You might find it helpful to view some of the Mellel tutorials: http://www.mellel.com/video-tutorials/

The Hebrew tutorial also applies to Arabic and other right-to-left languages

Many thanks !