Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Arabic text in lyrics? (Read 9668 times) previous topic - next topic

Arabic text in lyrics?

Has anyone succeeded in placing Arabic text in the lyrics of NoteWorthy Composer?

I saw a hint about using a different Times New Roman font, but installing this font and writing in Arabic, did not seem to work. I have just a line of question marks in my lyrics. (Although when I type the Arabic text into the Lyrics text box it appears correctly.)

This text is an example of Arabic, if that helps: "اهلاً وسهلاً".

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #2 –
Thank-you.
I wasn't looking for right-to-left support for the music, if that's what you were implying.

Unfortunately, merely selecting characters from a character map--should it work--will not suffice. Arabic may have up to four forms of each letter, depending on the context. I can choose these forms from a character map, but the forms do not link. Only a proper script with its support will work. I presume this means Unicode?

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #3 –
G'day matta,
Quote from: matta –
<snip>
Only a proper script with its support will work. I presume this means Unicode?

Yes, and that in turn means post processing.  There are several threads here about post processing but you basically "Copy" from print preview to either the clipboard OR an EMF file that you save to and then open/import into a DTP or word processing product that supports unicode.

Several come to mind, m$ Publisher, Open Offoce, m$ Office, etc..

Probably not the answer you hoped for but as NWC doesn't support unicode...
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: matta –
Unfortunately, merely selecting characters from a character map--should it work--will not suffice. Arabic may have up to four forms of each letter, depending on the context.
NoteWorthy will recognize 223 different glyphs from a TrueType font. It attaches special meaning to Underscore and Dash, leaving 221. This should suffice for a basic Arabic presentation. You could use a font editor to 'borrow' 221 glyphs from a Unicode font and map them into the characters that NoteWorthy recognizes.

Something similar was done by Stan Takis in his Timeital font (scroll down a few pages).

Each Lyric could be produced using CharMap into Notepad (in XP+) or WordPad (as a text file in Win9x) and copied into NoteWorthy - an arduous process. However if this much worked, a script could be written to convert a Unicode Notepad file into the correct single byte mapping.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #5 –
What Rick says is correct.  I didn't pursue it as you had said:

Quote from: matta –
<snip>
Arabic may have up to four forms of each letter, depending on the context. I can choose these forms from a character map, but the forms do not link.

4 forms for each character...  Just how many characters are there in the Arabic alphabet?  We use 26 with 2 forms = 52, plus numbers and punctuation etc. plus allowance for additional characters in many European languages. 

Can this be made to fit in around 220 characters?  If so, then there are plenty of font creation tools around.  I purchased "Font Creator Pro" when I wanted to created my *Dings suites.  I got the pro version, but to simply copy glyphs from one font to another then the standard version will probably suffice - IIRC it was about $60 US.  The pro version I purchased at $99 US (again IIRC).  I'm not particularly plugging this product, it just happens to be the one I was comfortable with - there are others.

The forms should link if the glyphs are all taken from the same source font...
Is there any correlation between western characters and Arabic ones?  I.E. is there any logical connection where pressing say, 'a', would relate to one particular Arabic character more so than another? 

If this is the case then a specific arabic font with western mappings might be fairly easy to use with only occasional need to refer to a character map tool (BTW I highly recommend "Typecase" for a character map task).

<break for phone call>

OK, just took a couple of minutes to ring a buddy of mine who lived in the middle east for quite some time.  He tells me that he doesn't remember exactly but that there are fairly close to the same number of letters as the English alphabet and that there is a fairly close correlation.  Therefore this should be no problem, other than the script having to be entered left to right...

If you aren't in a huge rush I might be able to put this together with your assistance.  I will need you to provide the mapping correlations for me - I.E. what arabic letter to map to 'a' etc..

As I won't be able to devote lots of time in any single sitting it will probably take several weeks and there may be copyright issues that will stop us from doing it quickly unless we can find a freeware unicode font to "borrow" from.  If we can't find a freeware one then I'll get you to write them out and scan them for me - I can then import 'em.

You could also try these sites for possible fonts:
http://www.vistawide.com/languages/foreign_language_fonts2.htm
http://www.freearabicfonts.com/

Tell me if you wish to proceed...

BTW, have you checked out any of my *Dings suites?  Is there value in considering an Arabic version of the symbols font (E.G. SwingDings.ttf - which was inspired by Boxmarks) or the Chord font?  I am aware that middle eastern music uses a very different tone system to western music and quarter and threequarter sharps and flats and stuff would be required...
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #6 –
Some old, but related discussion <here>

It also seems that Ertuğrul İnanç has expressed some interest in this in the past.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #7 –
NWC does not support Unicode text anywhere at the moment. However, recent changes to NWC enable full support for multi-byte (DBCS) text when the computer is enabled for such.

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #8 –
Many thanks, Lawrie, for the offer, but I don't think it will work.

In other programs, I can copy characters from the character map--even the medial shapes of letters (the form they take when found in the middle of a word)--but they don't join up.

As was said above, it's the Unicode font that is missing, as the font has the instructions for post-processing the characters.

Thanks anyway! We'll just have to wait until NoteWorthy Composer has Unicode support.

Cheers
M

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #9 –
G'day Matta,
I would like to explore this a little further...

I reckon we could create the characters so they can link or not link - just use different mappings - not nearly as hard to do as it is to explain.

For example:
Chr 065 = normally 'A' = 'A' equivalent in Arabic - not linking
Chr 165 = normally 'Yen' symbol =  'A' equivalent in Arabic - linking
Chr 097 = normally 'a' = 'a' equivalent in Arabic - linking
Chr 197 = normally Å = 'a' equivalent in Arabic - not linking

Or whatever mapping would be most convenient.  BTW, I seem to recall that numbers in arabic are also some of the letters in their alphabet - or was that some other language?

The high number ones would be most easily accessed via Typecase - easy as!

Anyhow, ilinking is just a matter of how the characters are drawn and being careful that the bits that link up are always the same thickness and at the same vertical height - I reckon we can make it work...  I just need some assistance for what character is what and how it should look...

Even a word processing document using a unicode font with Latin, Arabic linking and Arabic non-linking equivalents in a table would be a massive help.

Can you post such a document as an attachment to a reply?  IIRC you need to be an NWC2 tester to have the access.  If you can't, contact me via Personal Message and we'll sort another means out.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #10 –
Many thanks, Lawrie. I missed this post of yours.
Not sure the font creation is worth it. There'll be a lot of work. Perhaps Unicode will come in soon.
BTW, do you know if you can have two lines of lyrics, each in a different font?

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #11 –
I don't think Unicode will come in anytime soon.  It would be quite a revision...
You can't have 2 lines of lyrics, each in a different font, despite desires for such, and I don't think it would be too hard.

It is a pity that it's so hard to get these in.  However, I would be surprised if there weren't a font like the one Lawrie would make, since I know there are some for Korean and Hebrew...
 

Re: Arabic text in lyrics?

Reply #12 –
G'day matta,
Quote from: matta –
Not sure the font creation is worth it. There'll be a lot of work. Perhaps Unicode will come in soon.

Kahman answered most of your questions, however, I'm quite willing to take on this project provided you don't need it yesterday - it'll take a while.

My SwingDings suite took me, ooh, 'bout 2 years I think, but it was much larger...  The MusikDings* pair took only a couple of months as I had Swingdings to work from and I had a holiday at the time allowing me to work on them.

This wouldn't take 2 years, but there would be some months in it as I have to squeeze it in between my real job.

I would need you to provide guidelines and do some proof reading.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.