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TeX, the powerful computer typesetting system by D.E. Knuth, and
LaTeX, its extension by L. Lamport to handle structured documents,
have both been adapted to handle passages of arabic script. Our new
system, ArabTeX, will accept as input an ASCII encoding of the
standard transliteration of Arabic, and will generate the arabic
writing with a full complement of vowel marks, automatically
producing most of the usual ligatures, and obeying the common
writing rules. Likewise, or additionally, the standard
transliteration can also be generated from the same input. The
notation is easily readable and suitable for electronic
transmission. For non-vocalized writing, a reduced input notation is
available, as are some extensions for other languages using the
arabic script, and for reproducing erroneous or archaic documents.
ArabTeX will run on a wide range of hardware platforms in
conjunction with any TeX implementation that can be extended by
loading additional macros and additional fonts. No special equipment
is required.
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