[XeTeX] Problem with typesetting table with Arabic characters with TeX Live 2009 on Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04

[Jonathan Kew]

On 12 Aug 2009, at 10:36, Edin Salkovic wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have attached a minimal problematic file, and the log it generates
> on my system.  I have installed TeX Live 2009 in my home directory.  I
> don't have Ubuntu's texlive installed.
>
> On Windows and MikTeX 2.7 the file builds fine.

This is a LaTeX issue, nothing to do with the presence of the Arabic  
characters. It is coming from your tabular lines:

   \arcell{لِتُفْعَلْ}&\arcell{اِفْعَلْ}\\
   [You] Be done!&[You] Do!\\

Here, LaTeX interprets [You] as an optional argument of the \\  
command, and then complains (because the optional arg of \\ is  
supposed to be a dimension). Hence the error:

   ! Missing number, treated as zero.
   <to be read again>
                      Y
   l.17 [You]
              Be done!&[You] Do!\\

I expect inserting \relax after \\, to terminate the scan for an  
optional arg, ought to fix your problem.

(I'm surprised it works on Windows/MikTeX, actually; I don't know  
what's different about the two setups. Unless it's simply running in  
\scrollmode, so the error message flies past and the job continues,  
perhaps? Have you compared the logs?)

JK