Is there a way to "convert" (or invert) a "western" document to a right-to-left Persian one?

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    • #63681

      Hi everyone,

      I have just finished a (Spanish) book with about 200 pages. There is a picture on almost every page of this book.

      Now a friend of mine will lend me a laptop with the InDesign Middle Eastern Edition on which I am going to create the Persian (Farsi) version of the book, which is an exact translation of the Spanish one. As you'll know, written Farsi looks similar to Arabic and goes from right to left, while the first page of the book is where we expect the last one. In short, a Farsi/Persian or Arabic book looks like an English one seen in a mirror.

      The Persian version will have to fit exactly into the same space of 200 pages. That means that in each language version the pages with the same page number will have the same picture on them.

      So my question is: If I remove all the main text of the Spanish version, leaving all the pictures where they currently are, will I then be able to open the document in the InDesign ME edition in a way that all the pages will get placed just in an inverted order keeping their correct pictures on them? The software will have to know that it's a Persian book an not an English one. Is it possible to set the language for the whole document (in InDesign ME) to Farsi so that all pages will get placed in the right (= right to left) order?

      Or is there some trick I will have to use??

    • #63685
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      I don't know if anything can do that automatically, but if anything can, it would be World Tools at In-tools.com. Check that out!

    • #63686

      Hi, thank you!

      I am going to check it out right now.

      I guess my next question on indesignsecrets.com will be something like “Is there anything David does NOT know?”… :-)

    • #63694

      I've never worked with the ME version, but I bet you can find something like “Page Binding Side” in Document Setup. The Scripting guide shows this value can be either “Bound on the left” or “Bound on the right”, which nicely corresponds to a book that is read front-to-back or … (oh wait) I mean right-to-left (what you are most likely used to) or left-to-right (for Hebrew, Arabic, and probably a couple of other scripts).

      (Correction) Um, it depends on the wording :)

      If you consider how the pages turn while reading, an English book is “right to left'. But on second thought, maybe this can be best described as in which direction you read: left to right for English, right to left for Farsi.

      .. That “oh wait” is of course because books in Farsi are also read front-to-back. It's just that the front is on the other side, the back side (which is then, of course, the front side).

    • #63702

      The ScribeDOOR plugin (from the same people as the ME version) has a menu item “Reverse Layout”, for the conversion process, with options to:

      • Flip Text Frames
      • Flip Frames With Graphics Content
      • Flip Paths
      • Flip Objects Angles

      and

      • Flip Graphics
      • Reverse Stories Direction
      • Change Table(s) Direction

      as well as choosing which side the binding goes.

      As well as the document-wide options, you can deal individually with graphics that have an influence on the text, like people pointing at something for example, or a sequence of pictures that “reads” left to right, which you might want to reverse.

      Columns in a text frame also get flipped around, so that the columns correctly run right to left.

      (Just don't get me started on what happens to opening and closing brackets where the direction of the text is “neutral” !)

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