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Old May 26th 06, 09:51 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
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Default need some help with Arabic text copy/paste, convert to unicode?

I am using a Forum script with an Arabic language pack and have to add
two
arabic phrases to the Phrase Manager.

The phrases a

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I don't speak/read Arabic but a friend translated the phrases for me:

???? ?????
???? ????

I copied these from a Word doc and don't know how they will dispay
when

I
post this.. I do see that it's being displayed in the wrong direction

if
I
compare it to the Word doc, but I'm not even sure if I'm seeing it

right
in
the Word doc.. You can see the attachment in this post I wrote on the
forum
of the Forum script:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=186111

Anyway, the problem is that when I copy the phrases from the Word doc

in
the
Phrase Manager then something goes wrong. The first word becomes the
second
word and vice versa, and in the second word the first letter has to be

at
the end of the word. See attachement, this is how it displays on my

site.

I see in the phrase manager that the word Arabic (I think it means
Arabic)
is showed as this code: العربية

My guess is that I have to input my Arabic phrases in that same code,

but
I
don't know what that code is (unicode?), or how to convert the Arabic
phrases that my friend wrote into such code.

I've installed Windows right-to-left language support on my pc and I
added
Arabic to the language manager, but I think that that would be only
useful
when I would type the words letter by letter and not when I
copy/paste.
But
since I don't have an Arabic keyboard and don't know the Arabic
letters
all
I can do is copy/paste.

Can someone please help?

Thanks,

Rik.



Copy & paste works very nicely with Arabic text, provided
that the copy-from and the paste-to applications support Arabic
characters. Outlook Express does not, hence your Arabic text
appears as question marks. I copied the words from the site
you quoted and pasted them into Microsoft Word without
any problems.

You can type Arabic text on your normal keyboard by using
the keyboard map shown he
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/r...keyboards.mspx
Make sure to use IE6 when accessing this site. You will find that
Alif (a vertical bar) is mapped to H, Ba (the bathtub with a dot
below) is mapped to F and Ya (looks like a big S) is mapped to D.

If you're keen to find out the character codes used then have a look
at these lines from a binary lister of my Word document containing
two lines:
111, two Arabic words, 222
333, two more Arabic words, 444

Here is the hex code:
000A00 31 00 31 00 31 00 2C 06 2F 06 4A 06 2F 06 20 00
000A10 39 06 45 06 48 06 36 06 32 00 32 00 32 00 0D 00
000A20 33 00 33 00 33 00 2C 06 2F 06 4A 06 2F 06 20 00
000A30 28 06 2C 06 48 06 27 06 34 00 34 00 34 00 0D 00

And here are the details:
Line A00: 111,ArabicWord,Space
Line A10: ArabicWord,222,NewLine
Line A20: 333,ArabicWord,Space
Line A30: ArabicWord,444,NewLine


Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Perhaps the problem is the Admin Control Panel of

the
Forum script in which I have to copy the Arabic text. Obviously it does
support Arabic characters because after I pasted the Arabic text in the
phrase manager in the admin, the Arabic characters do display on the
forum
itself. But for some reason when I paste the text it appears in the wrong
order. Even when I do it word by word it goes wrong. I took a look at the
keyboard map on the link that you gave, but I don't know the Arabic

alphabet
so I don't know how to use the map. I still don't know what would be the
best way to get those two phrases displaying the way they should. The
only
thing I can think of is to compare each letter with the letters on the
map
and find the one that corresponds with it. That should work for just
these
two phrases but when I need to enter more text then it would be too
time-consuming. I was hoping that there was some kind of tool available

for
this.



Retyping the text is not an option unless you know the Arabic
alphabet, because the same letter appears in different shapes,
depending on its position in a word. The keyboard map shows
only one of four possible shapes!

Your first step should be to determine if Forum Script handles
Arabic text correctly. I suggest you try this:
1. Launch Forum Script.
2. Switch your keyboard into Arabic mode.
3. Press these letters on your keyboard: fdj. It is the word
for "house" and it should look like the attachment to this
reply.
4. Repeat the same exercise in Microsoft Word.


Okay thanks. I did what you said (see attachment, at the top you see the
Arabic in the Forum Script, at the bottom the Arabic in Microsoft Word). I
think it looks like your attachment. It doesn't look 100% the same but
that's probable because the font types aren't the same.

What should I do next?




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