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Many questions about LaTeX in the past 29 years I could solve by searching in the internet -- many by great answers I found on your site. But this time, a mistake is haunting me since months, I have been searching for days, whatever I look up, whatever I try: Nothing helps...

Since about 16 years I am writing a script, meanwhile more than 1600 pages. As I started to do with LaTeX at that time and make heavy use of psfrag, I don't now want to switch to XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX.

Inside the script I use several languages: German (mainly), English, Italian, Latin, Chinese, Arabic, Ancient Greek (no, I am not capable of speaking all those languages, sorry... ;-))) ). Many of the foreign texts I simply copy and paste. Therefore my source file is encoded in UTF-8, a minimum working example looks like this:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[arabic]{babel}

\begin{document}

\verb!أبو يعقوب بن إس|حاق الكندي!

أبو يعقوب بن إس|حاق الكندي

\AR{أبو يعقوب بن إس|حاق الكندي}

\end{document}

(The Arabic part of my source looks a bit different here than in my source file. Please look at the added screenshot, which compares my editor, my pdf-output and the editor for this post: I copied and pasted the arabic line in my editor three times -- but the line with the verb-command automaticly changes the order. In the pdf-output all three lines look similar, but different from the lines in the source. In the editor of StackExchange two lines look like in my editor, but the order of the line with the verb-command is not inverted automatically.Screenshot showing my Winshell editor, the pdf-output and StackExchange's editor all show slight differences)

It compiles without error messages. But the result somewhere in the middle is slightly different from my input. I asked an Arabic colleague. He confirms, that one letter is wrong...

My System: TexLive2018 full install, fully updated on Win7, Winshell editor.

Now my last hope is: Perhaps anyone has an idea, what I could do?

(As I post for the first time in this forum, I apologize in case, I did something wrong...)

ThorstenL
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    Welcome to TeX.SE. Your sample program won't run under pdfLaTeX -- I get an error message, about \RL being an "undefined control sequence". Does one need to load additional packages? – Mico Nov 25 '19 at 05:44
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    The right Arabic text is أبو يعقوب بن إسحاق الكندي not أبو يعقوب بن إس|حاق الكندي and command \RL is not defined, you can rather use \AR or \textRL. – Salim Bou Nov 25 '19 at 07:00
  • Hello Mico, thank you for your welcome! I must admit, I did something wrong late last night, \RL doesn't compile with me either. I edited my original post to correct that, now everything compiles quite right here. Also in that original post I added some lines and a screenshot, to make my problem clearer. And I added a line about my system. – ThorstenL Nov 25 '19 at 16:57
  • Hello Salim Bou, thank you for your help! Unfortunately I don't remember, where I copied the arabian text from, and as I can't speak, read or write Arabic, in the moment I don't know, what it means, so I have no means to look it up and control. I tried your corrected version, that compiles quite well. Nevertheless I think, that my probably wrong version should compile well as well? With the command \RL you are right, of course, I already corrected that in the original post. – ThorstenL Nov 25 '19 at 17:11
  • Hello Salim Bou, meanwhile I found out, the Arabian should be Abū Yaʿqūb ibn Ishāq al-Kindī, I probably copied the arabic text from the german Wikipedia -- and there meanwhile it reads exactly like you propose. So my problem in the moment is solved, thank you very much! – ThorstenL Nov 26 '19 at 00:01
  • You are welcome, the Arabian text is just a name of a man (a philosopher). – Salim Bou Nov 28 '19 at 14:37
  • Thank you, yes, he was quite active writing about optics (Kitab Tanquih al Manazir) based on the work (Kitab al Manazir) of the other great arabian philosopher, whom we in the West call Alhazen... ;-))) – ThorstenL Nov 29 '19 at 03:11

0 Answers0