To read and type Arabic text on the PWF Macintosh computers you need to set your System
Preferences to enable an input menu which will allow you to enter Arabic characters using the
standard English keyboard.
1. From the Apple Menu (top left) pull down System Preferences > international.
2. Click the Input Menu tab.
3. A list of available keyboards and input methods will appear. Use the checkboxes to select the
language input methods you are likely to need. Note that if you want to type combinations of
languages which use the same characters but arrange them differently on the keyboard (e.g.
French and German), it probably makes sense to choose just one input method so that you can
touch-type.
4. Near the top of the list of input methods is an item called "Keyboard Viewer". This is a
diagram of the current keyboard layout which will show you the locations of the various
characters. Check this if you think you will need to refer to it to locate your characters.
5. Close International.
6. A menu headed by a British Union Flag icon will appear in the top right of the screen. If you
click on it you will see the list of input methods that you added in step 3.
7. Start up the word-processor application you intend to use and open the document in which you
want to type Arabic. WARNING! Not all word-processing programs can cope with Arabic.
You may find that you need to use a specialised program such as Nisus Writer instead of Word.
8. Click once on the keyboard menu to drop down a complete menu of the available keyboards.
9. Click on the Arabic keyboard. You should notice that the keyboard icon changes to a crescent
moon. This will switch back to the British flag whenever the cursor is placed in an area where it
is not possible to type Arabic letters.
10. Change the paragraph alignment setting to “right-justified”.