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InDesign ME (Middle East)

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Alois Lehner

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Oct 31, 2002, 11:59:09 AM10/31/02
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Go for it!

The update 2.01 is already included in the new ME version.
I purchased version 1.5 ME a few weeks ago and just wait for my free upgrade.
I also do have the Englisch 2.01 and there is a special offer to get the ME version.

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Win Sup

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Nov 4, 2002, 12:35:25 PM11/4/02
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Kindly note that Adobe's ME products are specially coded to support Arabic and Hebrew. Thus they will not respond to normal Adobe updaters, fixes, and service packs.
For updaters, fixes, service packs, support, sales, marketing and other related information on Adobe ME products please go to www.winsoft.fr

Teus de Jong

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Nov 7, 2002, 7:21:27 AM11/7/02
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I work with ID 2.01 and ID ME 2.01. ID 2.01 is a great program. It now supports OpenType Arabic fonts. I think there's no better product to produce Arabic or mixed Arabic/Western texts. I'm producing a 2000 pages dictionary with it and have no major problems.

Teus de Jong

Raphael Freeman

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Nov 7, 2002, 8:33:48 PM11/7/02
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I have been using ID ME 2.01. I can't talk for the Arabic, but with regard to Hebrew there are still some issues to be sorted out and the software is still a bit buggy. There should be a dot release soon.

Ari Davidow

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Dec 5, 2002, 10:39:54 AM12/5/02
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What do you mean, "buggy"?

How is it with vowel placement? Who is providing OpenType fonts w/vowels, or other fonts that place the vowels correctly for Hebrew?

I can use InDesign on either the Mac or Windows--I currently have it on Windows, and Quark XPress on the Mac. I've been doing backwards setting for the Hebrew using XPress, something that I'd love to eschew as soon as I can get results close enough to my hand-kerned perfection ;-).

Raphael Freeman

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Dec 5, 2002, 4:15:48 PM12/5/02
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This is the latest on ID 2.01 ME.
They are upto build 0070 which is pretty stable. This week I have moved from 62 to 62 to 67 to 69 and today I installed 70. It's not 100% there yet, but it hasn't crashed once which is pretty good. My experiment is a very heavy children's Hebrew reading book with vowels, metegs, kamatz katans etc. with loads of graphics.

Anyway regarding opentype Hebrew fonts with vowels. To date there is only one provided by Winsoft (the makers of ME) but you can't really do any real work in it, it is just there to show font designers how to make the Hebrew fonts for OpenType.

When Karatsoft are satisfied that the software works properly (I should point out that ID 2ME was officially released and I have a box proving that on my shelf courtecy of Winsoft) then Karatsoft will market the product and this will include a number of fonts with nikud by Tzvika Rosenberg (Masterfont).

Regarding Guttman fonts, the conversion is actually in my hands, but I haven't yet started working on that since really I'm a typesetter not a font converter! However I do have somebody who should start working on that next week. Elsner+Flaker who produce probably the best quality Hebrew fonts (you may know their fonts because of PageMaker) hope to have nikud and maybe taamey mikra too, but that is a long way away. And finally Fontbit are also working on it, but they haven't started on the nikud yet (I know this coz I'm supposed to be helping them with that!)

However, as it happens you can actually place nikud correctly in InDesign even with regular fonts. There is a palette called diacritic positioning and you can search and replace for letter vowel combinations. A royal pain in the ass, if you excuse my french, because you can't "save" your search and replaces. Also it won't help you with the positioning of the meteg and this has to be moved manually for each occurance.

However, I am not being fair. This is not a fault of InDesign so much but more the fact that the typefaces are not finished yet. However it shouldn't take too much time.

If it's a choice between Quark or InDesign ME then there is no competition.

If you wish to discuss this further with me you are welcome to be in touch with me directly.

Ian A. Wright

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Dec 5, 2002, 5:18:55 PM12/5/02
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Raphael:

Thanks for sharing your experiences with other Users. It's members like you who are willing to spend time and money helping others that makes this a nice place to be.

Teus de Jong

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Dec 6, 2002, 11:41:00 AM12/6/02
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I agree with Raphael Freeman: build 70 has almost everything sorted out. I work with Arabic fonts, and there are several Arabic fonts with OpenType support (including diacritic or vowel positioning) which work good with this new build: Lotus Linotype (included with the product), NaskhOT Monotype, and of course the fonts from WinSoft itself.

My guess is that the 2.0.1a update will there within about a week.

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