Problems with Arial Unicode in Punjabi in InDesign CS3

[Leah_...@adobeforums.com]

My translator supplied me with a Punjabi MSWord document, which I imported into InDesign CS3. For some reason, some of character strings are displaying in the wrong order. For example, what was supplied as ਿਕ appears as ਕਿ in the InDesign layout. When I copy and paste that character string into another application (such as this message box), the order is once again correct. It appears that InDesign is the only application that causes this problem. Other applications such as Firefox and Safari do not invert the characters.

Any suggestions?

[Leah_...@adobeforums.com]

Further to my last comment, when I review what I posted, the two character strings now look the same. They definitely looked different on screen before I posted this note. In fact, in InDesign, what looks like the letter "f" appears at the end of the word, not the beginning where it should be.

[Fred_G...@adobeforums.com]

I believe Punjabi is a language that is written right-to-left.

You can not set right-to-left text in the regular version in CS3. You
must buy the ME version of InDesign.

In CS4 you have many more choices, see:

http://www.thomasphinney.com/2009/01/adobe-world-ready-composer/

[Joel_C...@adobeforums.com]

OP is asking about Gurhmukhi script, which is roughly Devangari-derived and is written from left to right. The Punjabi you're thinking of is Shahmukhi script, written in a script similar to Urdu. So, getting ME isn't the solution.

I don't think that you'll be able to do Gurmukhi in Unicode in InDesign CS3 at all; there are some plugin. I typically back-convert to proprietary encoding when I absolutely must deliver Punjabi in InDesign. (Or I simply ask my translator to use an obsolete font.) I think that CS4 should be able to do it, but I haven't yet laid hands on a license. There are some plugins available to do Indic scripts in ID, but I rarely work in those scripts, so I haven't even kept the link. I'll dig for it, if you'd like. But I think that upgrading to CS4 might be your best option.

It's not just InDesign's problem, as you seem to think; poor support for complex scripts is quite common in the world of page layout applications.

Edit: If you have iWork, I'd bet that Pages would render the characters correctly.

[Harbs]

For CS3, this is probably your best bet...
http://www.metadesignsolutions.com/IndicPlus.html

--
Harbs
http://www.in-tools.com

[Joel_C...@adobeforums.com]

Even if the OP never returns - thanks, Harbs. That's just the link I was digging for.

[Deepika]

On Apr 3, 4:50 am, Joel_Cher...@adobeforums.com wrote:
> Even if the OP never returns - thanks, Harbs. That's just the link I was digging for.

Hi all,

This is FYI that I have been working on InDesign and using IndicPlus
from MetaDesign Solutions for Gurmukhi language and I am pretty
satisfied with this products performance. This plugin is now available
for InDesign CS4 as well.
http://www.metadesignsolutions.com/IndicPlus.html

-Deepika