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_informatique_
Participant
February 6, 2009
Question

Illustrator and Arabic text

  • February 6, 2009
  • 13 replies
  • 86415 views
How can I write Arabic text in Adobe Illustrator OR CS suite???

No way? Plugin? ME edition?

I have a full license of CS3 and CS4 and i can't compose Arabic text!

It's a mistake?
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    13 replies

    luluzaza72
    luluzaza72
    Participant
    October 29, 2015

    I have been trying to get an .odt text (correctly set and provided by client) into Illustrator in order to design a business card.

    At first I used cut (from original .odt file) and paste into Illustrator, but the text kept displaying the characters in reverse order.

    I also tried Photoshop and got the same result.

    I tried the same thing MS Word, but that crashed.

    I finally got it to work by doing this:

    open Illustrator CC 2015 / Preferences / Type / put a check mark in the box “show indic options" / selected an Arabic typeface / pasted correct ODT text / it displayed correctly

    These are the only steps I needed to take.

    I opened a new document to test and learned that the setting in Preferences needs to be selected BEFORE you paste the text. If you have already pasted the text and then change the preference the characters will be in the wrong order.

    Hope this helps. The other suggestions in the previous post seem much more complicated than this easy fix. Good luck!

      Y
      Yo!Highness
      Participant
      February 24, 2017

      This worked for me on AI CC. Thanks so much!

      A
      Anonymous
      July 3, 2015

      Hey guys, I recently encountered this problem with a designer friend.
      We had a couple of projects that required the use of Arabic texts. So I had created a small app for her.

      Very simple to use. You paste the required Arabic text into the field provided, and with a press of a button, the app will throw out a fixed Arabic text ready to use in your clipboard...

      Link -> Arabic Text Fixer

      Hope this helps you guys!

      R
      razinb76746335
      Participant
      June 7, 2015

      win 7 64bit

      win 7
      winwdscfaeedfqew
      W
      WISE-MIGUEL
      Participant
      December 23, 2011

      I can teach you a small trick that I discovered myself;

      Uing Microsoft word and adobe acrobat pro, you can type the text you want in arabic using the Arial font, then export the document to PDF format.

      Now go to illustrator and open the file.

      At first it will tell you that a font substitution will occur, then it will display your text in rectangles.

      Just double click your text and select Arial font again and voila.......

      just copy your text to your file and outline it.

      Cheers

        Seattle_User
        Seattle_User
        Participating Frequently
        March 31, 2009
        We ended up purchasing Illustrator CS4 ME. You're right - we needed the full Arabic text capabilities including all the ligatures.
        J
        jerehmy
        Participant
        July 15, 2011

        Adobe has created a .psd file that supports correct RTL Arabic. You can open this in Illustrator or Photoshop and you're ready to go. Works quick and easy and saves you shovling out loads of money on ME version.

        http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4107

        Cheers!

        _
        _Elaine_Koppany_
        Participant
        March 29, 2009
        I work at a company that uses Arabic Text, and went through this very problem. We had to install the ME version of Adobe. There is no getting around it.

        E
        Seattle_User
        Seattle_User
        Participating Frequently
        February 25, 2009
        Wade, having lived in Seattle for 10 years myself, I'm not a fan, either! Oh well.

        Thanks for the input - I appreciate it. We're approaching the crux of this problem and will need to make a decision soon, so we'll see how it goes.
        _
        _gastroboy_
        Participant
        February 23, 2009
        Wade,

        It is not enough to type Arabic backwards, not that that is a good idea anyway, the characters are formed contextually whether they are the at beginning, middle or end of a word or isolated completely.

        MacOSX has the ability to do right to left text but Adobe doesn't use the core technology involved.
        W
        Wade S Zimmerman
        Participating Frequently
        February 20, 2009
        Seatte

        Your not from a City I love but here is something you can do that is safe.

        You can if you have a MacPro use and external disk and install a system on that then boot from that system, holding down the option key at start up will give you the disk chooser, then Install the ME version on that to be safe you will have to boot into that system to use the ME version.

        The other thing you can do if you have a MacPro is to simply install Windows on hard drive it has to be the first drive in the internal bay order than install the windows version of ME
        and use one of the several software that will allow you to switch back and forth while booted in the MacOS.

        You can easily find out if this is possible by asking the Adobe Store or customer relations.

        If you have the software already and the system allows you to install then you will be at least able to install alongside what you already have but if it is safe I doubt anyone knows.

        However there are some software that will allow you to back up your current system and disk so if you try it and it goes wrong you will be able to restore what you now have.

        I believe Time Machine will also do this for you.
        Seattle_User
        Seattle_User
        Participating Frequently
        February 19, 2009
        Does anyone know if any standard English CS4 application can co-exist on the same computer with CS4 Middle Eastern versions? I currently have CS3 and CS4 coexisting happily, and I'd like to install the trial of CS4 ME (Illustrator and InDesign only) to see how they work...but I don't want to mess anything up.
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