Arabic: Selecting Arabic

To change to the Arabic alphabet, press Ctrl+Shift+A or click Tools, Lingua, Arabic Alphabet or use the Language Bar. To return to the Roman alphabet, press Ctrl+Shift+R. In Ibidem and Orbis, use Ctrl+Shift+A and Ctrl+Shift+R to switch to Arabic and back to the Roman alphabet.

As with all the other alphabets, when you select Arabic, you are selecting both:

•	The desired language within that alphabet (Arabic proper, Farsi, or Urdu)

•	The keyboard layout used to type that language

If you need to type in other languages, while remaining within Arabic, use Ctrl+Shift+L (or click Tools, Lingua, Language Selection) and select a different option. Note that you can:

•	Change only the internal language code («LA......»), retaining the active keyboard (your document may then have various combinations of «LAArabic», «LAFarsi», and «LAUrdu» codes)

•	Change only the active keyboard, while retaining the existing language code (only the default Language code will appear in your document)

•	Change both the internal language code and the keyboard

Note that, in general, changing language codes does not currently make a substantial difference in Nota Bene. However, by utilizing them, you add more information to the document that might prove useful in the future: Among other things, having language codes makes adding context-sensitive spelling, thesaurus, hyphenation, sorting, and other functions possible (but note that we cannot make any commitments of any kind whatsoever as to the availability of these expanded capabilities). Especially since changing language codes while changing keyboards is no more difficult than simply changing keyboards, we strongly recommend utilizing these language codes.

Although you can choose not to distinguish languages within Arabic, you cannot choose to suppress the Arabic code entirely: One of the three language codes («LAArabic», «LAFarsi», or «LAUrdu» codes), depending on the last selection, will automatically be inserted when you select Arabic. The language code is used by the program to properly flip the directionality of Arabic.