A U.S. defense contractor had a problem. The contractor produces interactive training materials for the military using Adobe InDesign. These materials contain a mix of right-to-left reading Arabic text and left-to-right reading English text. The materials are exported as fixed layout EPUB. A limitation of Adobe InDesign is that exporting fixed layout EPUB doesn't support right-to-left reading languages.

The best solution the client had arrived at was to convert all the Arabic text in each publication to outlines. But that is extremely difficult to do because their publications contain complex buttons, multi-state objects, and groups. Globally converting all the Arabic text to outlines or graphics causes interactivity to be lost.

I was able to write a custom InDesign script for them that with a single click accurately converts all paragraphs that are right-to-left reading to be converted to outlines with all the original appearance and interactivity preserved.

My knowledge of some of the language-specific nuances of working with Arabic text gleaned from projects for the Seattle Public Library and the MN Dept. of Human Services came in handy on this project.

Great job...It’s been really great working with you. I’m glad I found you.
S. J.