RIGHT-TO-LEFT, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi ... IN INDESIGN CS4 (NONE-ME)

[AlIrani]

Hello all,

The professional users of Adobe products in the middle east has always been forced to wait for a third part co. to modify these products in such way to make them handle the very specific behavior of Arabic script i.e. Right-to-Left text flow and the cursive connectivity of the characters to build a word among the other thing.

With the release of Adobe CS4, it seems that Abobe is heading toward a substantial change in their policy on providing their products to answer the needs of users in this part of the world. The observers has noticed that Abobe has included the routines which make the CS4 suite to deal with ME features, this is called World-Ready Composer.

Although these features are not yet available to users directly out of the box but they are there. To make use of these possibilities some pro users has written different script/plug-ins which brings these feature to the surface and let the user to take advantage of them. Needles to say that still these possibilities of processing the RTL is not comparable to that of Adobe ME provided by WinSoft but it is a big step on the right way.

These plug-ins/scripts which priced from free to ca 50 dollar will satisfy the basic need of the users who want to use the CS4 for sporadical use of Arabic/Persian.
Following are the list of these plug-ins

1- Free script by Thomas Silkjæ of indesigning.net.
More info. InDesigning.net :: Right-to-left, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi ... in InDesign CS4 (none-ME)
Download the script from here: Adobe - InDesign Scripts

2- In-tool plug-ins , $49
In-Tools » Adobe InDesign Plugins » World Tools

3- idRTL plug-ins, $29
Features - Mac ?(adoberighttoleft)?


For more profound info on this matter please visit the Thomas Phinney's blog, at World-Ready Composer in Adobe CS4 | Phinney on Fonts

Best regards
Al-Irani

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Quite right on your analysis AlIrani. I have tested In-Tools when it was launched right after InDesign CS4 launch and found it capable in performing most jobs. Harbs who wrote the software/plug-in understands the needs of RTL users.

[AlIrani]

Quite right on your analysis AlIrani. I have tested In-Tools when it was launched right after InDesign CS4 launch and found it capable in performing most jobs. Harbs who wrote the software/plug-in understands the needs of RTL users.

Dear Zaid,

I was very keen to now your opinion in this matter so I am grateful for your comment. This is because you are an expert in Adobe products and the issues related to ME support in these programs. Have you tried the other 2 Script/plug-ins? in this case what is your assessment? I do not have CS4 so I am not able to try these softwares.

Best regards
Al-Irani

[Zaid Al Hilali]

I Haven't tested all, now it is late for me to test the other two plug-ins since I removed the International version of InDesign CS4 and have ME version on my 2 machines.

It is clear that Adobe is going to Add greater RTL support in their CS5 applications. I hope they will enable Arabic display, and editing in Flash as our Arabic language is missed when it comes to interactive and animated websites and medias.

[gierran]

Great post - very useful!

[nameisRC]

...Right-to-Left text flow and the cursive connectivity of the characters to build a word among the other thing.

It is worth mentioning IndicPlus here, the InDesign plugin which supports what is mentioned above, amongst other things.

This is an excellent plugin for InDesign which adds support for Indic fonts and Asian languages like Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Tamil, to name a few.

It has all the required features for Indic fonts like right-to-left text flow, cursive connectivity, etc. It supports both Windows and Macintosh platforms. It is available for CS2, CS3 and CS4 versions of Adobe InDesign.

There is also a trial version available...worth giving a try - IndicPlus - Indesign Plugin | MetaDesign Solutions

Kind regards

RC