how to write in arabic in pages on Mac ?

Pages has bugs that make it unsuitable for RTL scripts for most purposes. Instead you should use Mellel (the best), or TextEdit, Nisus Writer, or OpenOffice.

MS Word for Mac does not support Arabic at all.

The same question was asked here 2 days ago:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5133823?tstart=30

To tell Apple you want this fixed, use

http://www.apple.com/feedback

All the previous answers are not old, the question pops up regularly. And each time we recommend Mellel, TextEdit and LibreOffice instead.

iOS6 should be fine, the Mac version still has bugs.

Perhaps the upcoming new version will fix those.

Who can blame you for wondering why Apple is struggling to come to grips with modern life.

Peter

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

iOS6 should be fine

I think not, Peter:

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2013/01/ios-word-processor-for-arabichebrew.html

Now that is inexcusable. It gets most other languages.

Peter

You might also want to consider NeoOffice - which is a fork of OpenOffice but with a lot of OS X specific optimisations added, and in our experience an all round better experience on a Mac than the Mac ports of OpenOffice and / or LibreOffice.

Tom,

I've been looking through the threads to learn about using Arabic in Word on Mac and you seem to be the most knowledgeable on the subject. It's a hot topic at summer intensive Arabic programs all over the country and abroad. Thanks for all your help!

I've used the feedback link you recommended in your prior post but haven't heard anything from Apple - yet. Do you know if there is any plan for a fully Arabic-compatible version of Word for Mac in the works?

PBnJ9 wrote:

I've used the feedback link you recommended in your prior post but haven't heard anything from Apple - yet. Do you know if there is any plan for a fully Arabic-compatible version of Word for Mac in the works?

Apple doesn't respond to feedback, and there is no way to know if or when they will finally fix the RTL bugs in Pages after 8 years of requests.

As for Word for Mac, that has nothing to do with Apple, so you will have to ask MicroSoft. Personally I am not optimistic that the next version will support Arabic, even after 13 years of requests.

Just use Mellel.

Is there any reason you are wedded to Pages/Word?

Peter

The little dirty secret is the Fonts. Some fonts support arabic and some dont unlike in Windows.

Why? I have no idea, but it works well with all word documents. Just keep trying the fonts one by one until you succeed.

Hope this puts an end to all arabic typing issues with Mac, Microsoft and all word softwares.

Hope Apple and Microsoft sees my comment and take the necessary changes. Thanks.

Alaiddeen Hammoodi wrote:

it works well with all word documents. Just keep trying the fonts one by one until you succeed.

Please use the camera icon to provide a screenshot showing correct Arabic in Word for Mac, with the name of the font showing as well. That is really great news, but you are the only person I know of who is able to do this.

MS itself agrees if you ask them that MS Word for Mac does not support Arabic (or any Indic script).

The only partial exception I know of is if you get a MS Word for Windows document where they have embedded the Arabic font it may work when opened in MS Word for Mac.