Arabic-L:GEN:Arabtex Word Macro

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 16 Apr 2009
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Arabtex Word Macro

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1)
Date: 16 Apr 2009
From:Alexander Magidow <amagidow at gmail.com>
Subject:Arabtex Word Macro

Dear All,

As a personal project, I have developed a macro for MS Word that allows
you to type text in the Arabtex transliteration system
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabtex#Character_table), which the macro
then converts into either DMG or Library of Congress transliteration
(see below as well). I am writing on Arabic-L to see if anyone else is
interested in using this. It does require a certain amount of technical
knowledge to make use of this program, and is aimed at people whose
primary typesetting program is Latex (esp. Xelatex) using Arabtex or
Arabxetex, but who need to work with MS Word from time to time. If you
are interested I can send the source and instructions. I've describe
some of the more technical aspects below for those who are interested.

Technical details:
The macros are in VBA(Visual Basic Applications) and based on those from
TECKit from
SIL(http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=TECkit),
a program that provides a language for mapping between two character
encodings (typically between legacy encodings and unicode, but here
between transliteration methods). The transliteration files are from the
ArabXetex package
(http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/xetex/latex/arabxetex/), which
currently has transliteration files for the Library of Congress and DMG
transliteration methods. However, altering the transliteration methods
is relatively easy, given a basic knowledge of unicode and the excellent
TECKit documentation from SIL. It would be relatively easy to develop
classes for other transliteration methods, especially since they tend to
differ only in small details.

Using the macro requires the VBA modules, which must be altered slightly
to reflect your directory structure, the .dll files from TECKit, and the
transliteration files from ArabXetex. Currently, I have a function to
transliterate all lines in your document beginning with \ar, but it can
be reworked to transliterate everything in the document written in a
particular font, or possibly even a particular "style," or just to
transliterate the current selection.

If you're interested, please email me off the list,
Alex Magidow
University of Texas - Austin

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