Scenario:
Arabic poetry, line-for-line, each poem left-justified on the longest line within it using left margin indent and justified text. I have the direction, right-to-left, set correctly. It is the finer points I need assistance with.
Using: Indesign ME 2018, world ready composer, font is Traditional Arabic, language set to Arabic.
Questions (many):
Are later versions of ME any different/better than 2018 worth downloading with regard to menu option? For instance, in my “paragraph style”, I have Kashidas “on”, but can only set length (short, medium, stylistic . . . etc.) in the “paragraph” menu as an override. Additionally there are choices in the “character” menu also not showing in the paragraph style menu itself. Seems very clunky, shouldn’t all of the choices be available to be set in a unified paragraph style?
Are there FONTS that work better than others to aesthetically justify type?
What are the BEST settings for Kashidas, besides “on” in paragraph style? Short, medium, long, stylistic, flat . . . so many choices! These seem only available in the “paragraph”, but not part of the “paragraph style” menu?
What are the BEST justification settings for “word,” “character,” and “glyph” in the paragraph style to yield aesthetically pleasing justification?
below that, what is the max REASONABLE “Kashida Width” (this is a numerical number, 1-???), in “justification” settings, that yields and aesthetically pleasing justification?
below that, what are the BEST settings for Kashida choices: Standard, Arabic (legacy), Justification Alternatives (Naskh), Stylistic Flat and so on. Here again, so many settings, it seems that with all of the choices the results increase exponentially, and why.
Quandaries: I don’t find any real comprehensive information regarding the implications of all of the settings I question below: Adobe presumes you already understand what they are and how they work. I am new to Arabic and wonder if there is some comprehensive information explaining it? If not, then I need the best “nuts and bolts” approach to present this Professor’s work to the scholarly community without embarrassment.
thank you for whatever help can be offered. We learn and grow as we go. (pardon typos)
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