Polish had a similar export problem. If you export with the option “Include Embeddable Fonts” checked you should see correct characters. If it is not checked than you see ’?’ characters. There were some fixes with the “Include Embeddable Fonts” option for CS5. I have not tried the Telugu language so I cannot say if this works for CS4 and/or CS5.

Here is the explanation I got from a person on the Digital Editions Reader team -
Digital Editions currently only supports Western European and CJK languages.
Eastern European languages also work if fonts are embedded in the document. Standard character set which is built into Digital Editions itself does not have any characters beyond PDF standard encoding and Digital Editions does not look for system fonts for non-CJK languages. This is done so that no one is surprised when that same file does not work on handheld devices (which in almost all cases lack these characters). The answer for Eastern European languages right now is to always embed the font.

THANQ

[I wonder if part of your problem is that Pagemaker is not a Unicode aware application. When you worked with it in InDesign CS4, were you using a Unicode font to display the text? If not, I wonder if the text was even Unicode encoded.... Perhaps somebody else can say more?—T]

[Those who know can't say, thanks to non-disclosure agreements. I expect it will have to wait until at least the April 12th unveiling before more public info becomes available.—T]

(If I copy and paste into a new text frame in the actual template file, it works ok??)

[Yes. - T]

I’m a bit concerned about using proprietary solutions like IndicPlus, because supposing CS5 offers full support but by then I have created a few documents using IndicPlus, I will be locked into that technology (unless there’s a way to port the documents into the new standard). [That's a reasonable concern. You'd have to contact the vendor to see what their interop/migration story is.] Does anyone have any experience with creating Devanagari documents that open seamlessly on both Mac and PC and use an open-standard?

[The World Ready Composer is seamlessly cross-platform. Not sure what kind of open standard you're looking for, here.]

Of for a Gentium-like solution to the Devanagari problem.

[Unfortunately Gentium is just a font. I believe there are open source Devanagari fonts as well, but that isn't the whole solution.]

PS. I’m an academic, so I’m new to this stuff. Someone pointed me to InDesign as the way to go, he said I had to get a program that fully implemented the UniScribe standard, but it seems there are still issues with composing documents in Indic scripts. I appreciate any input!

[Uniscribe is Microsoft's Unicode text composition engine for Windows. It is a "standard" in the sense that it is available to any Windows application that chooses to use it. It is not cross-platform, nor open source. Adobe's World-ready Composer is not available to third-party applications, is cross-platform, and is not open source either. - T]

I am trying to create an IDD file with both English text and Arabic script. I downloaded the World Tools Plugin for IDD CS4, but i am still having trouble with the word order for Arabic phrases.

Specifically, when I copy and paste Arabic text from Google Docs, the word order gets messed up (it’s not just a simple Right – > Left issue, if there are 3 or more words in the phrase, the last word typically appears in the middle after a cut & paste, for eg.).

I have tried to manually correct the word order of the Arabic once it’s in IDD, but IDD automatically changes it back to the incorrect word order. Any suggestions about how I can ‘turn off’ this automation?

Is this a bug with the plugin perhaps?

Any insight you might have would be very much appreciated! Do I need to cave and buy the ME upgrade?

Thanks in advance to all,

Erin

New version of SpellPlus for InDesign now supports Spelling,Hyphenation and Thesaurus for 100+ languages in InDesign. Above all there is single license for both InDesign and InCopy and no separate license for each language. There is a Demo available with no limitation, Try before you Buy.

It is now available at discounted price of 89 USD.

Link to SpellPlus
http://metadesignsolutions.com/SpellPlus.html

List of Languages Supported
http://metadesignsolutions.com/languages.htm

- Amit

[I would expect that the problem is that the World Ready Composer requires OpenType fonts and does not work with Apple's proprietary AAT fonts. I did not really get into this angle in the article, but basically it means that for a bunch of these languages, Apple's system fonts are useless with the World-Ready Composer, although Microsoft's system fonts will work fine. - T]

There are update’s in IndicPlus, I would like to share with everyone.

Now the Pricing has reduced, IndicPlus for CS2 and CS3 version of InDesign is now available for 69 USD, and for CS4 we have an introductory price of 25 USD.

New versions of IndicPlus have enhanced support for Numbering Styles as compared to World Ready Composer.

More details can be viewed using the following URL

http://metadesignsolutions.com/IndicPlus.html

- Amit