[XeTeX] Numerals in Right-to-Left

[Otared Kavian]

At 9:07 -0500 15/11/04, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>The appropriate numerals for Arabic are the Unicode characters 
>0660..0669, and for Persian, 06F0..06F9. The Apple Arabic keyboard 
>generates the Arabic digits, and the Persian keyboard generates the 
>Persian ones. Both sets should work in Geeza Pro, for example; it's 
>possible that some other Arabic fonts may not support the Persian 
>characters.
>
>Depending on the particular font, you may find that the default 
>Latin digits (Unicode 0030..0039) are *not* supported and will 
>appear blank. Some applications may automatically display these 
>codes as Arabic or Persian forms when used in an Arabic-script 
>context, so it's possible to be misled as to what characters are 
>actually in your text.

Hi Jon, and all List members,

Thank you very much for the explanation. Using the examples you gave 
me, I tried several fonts (Geeza Pro, Kamran) and keyboards 
(Arabic-Azerty, Persian, Arabic) and noticed that the behaviour 
(appearance, disappearance) of the digits depends both on the 
keyboard which has been used to input the source file, and the font 
in which the text is typeset. But then there is a new issue: how an 
automatically determined number (such as page number, and so on) 
should be typeset?
For instance

\font\geeza="Geeza Pro" at 14pt
% or
% \font\kamran="Kamran" at 14pt
\footline{\vrule width 0cm height 30pt\beginR \geeza \hss --- 
{\folio} ---\hss\endR}
% or
% \footline{\vrule width 0cm height 30pt  \geeza \hss --- {\folio} ---\hss}

results in a blank surrounded by two sets of three dashes (instead of 
m-dashes).

Thank you for your attention.
Best regards: OK