I realized that typing documents in Arabic script on Microsoft Word is a tedious process. Selecting, formatting, aligning (among other things) Arabic text is a really inefficient process (especially if there is a mix of Arabic and Latin script). Could anyone share his experience with me and suggest me a some solutions which will make typing in Arabic a smoother process? (I was thinking of using latex, what do you think?) Thank you.
An to clarify, I'm not talking about using an Arabic keyboard, but about how the usual manipulation of text gets much harder with a right-to-left script
Best Answer
XeTeX and XeLaTeX. This post has info on using it for Arabic. There is a lot of discussion on the XeTeX mailing list. Finally, there is a video entitled Arabic typography: Past, present, and TeX.
Another useful references: http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb27-2/tb87kew.pdf
Arabic XeTeX on the Mac: