# Replacing Western Arabic numerals with Arabic–Indic numerals in formulas

Is there a way to use non-Western Arabic digits in formulas of an English tex document? For example in output of

$$\frac{100x}{25}$$


Arabic–Indic numerals/Eastern Arabic digits (٠ ١ ٢) will appear instead of Western Arabic (0, 1, 2) ones. I'm looking for a way workable with latex without using xetex.

• Don't use $$...$$. Use $...$ instead ;-). Far more important question: What are English digits? – user31729 Mar 25 '15 at 17:20
• Is it obsolete? – user62181 Mar 25 '15 at 17:21
• See tex.stackexchange.com/questions/503/why-is-preferable-to for the $$...$$ issue – user31729 Mar 25 '15 at 17:22
• This question is misleading. We tend to name 1,2,3 etc as arabic digits, not as English digits – user31729 Mar 25 '15 at 18:25
• I agree with @SoundsOfSilence that the wording is misleading. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system was adopted in Europe in the 12th century when al-Khwarizmi's book "Algebra" was translated and so the numbering became known as "Arabic numerals" (as opposed to "Roman numerals") which causes confusion. Perhaps it would be clearer if you replace "English digits" with "Western Arabic numerals" and "Arabic ones" with "Arabic–Indic numerals" or "Eastern Arabic numerals" for clarity. – Nicola Talbot Mar 25 '15 at 18:54

with arabtex package

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{arabtex,utf8}   \setcode{utf8}
\begin{document}
test
$\ell+\frac{\RL{100}x}{\RL{25}}$
\end{document}

• \usepackage[arabic]{babel} was needed for me. Is there a way to change the digits' font? – user62181 Mar 25 '15 at 18:40
• babel arabic have nothing to do here and no arabtex have only this font – touhami Mar 25 '15 at 19:16

You could use lualatex:

%!TEX TS-program = lualatex
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Times New Roman}
%   \newfontfamily\arabicfont[Script=Arabic,Numbers=Arabic]{Arial Unicode MS}

\begin{document}
test
$\ell+\frac{١٠٠x}{٢٥}$
\end{document}


But I do not know how to use a specific font for the Arabic. Simply enclosing the numbers in \arabicfont(defined in preamble) does not seem to work in the environment.

for Arabic numbers

\AtBeginDocument{\setdefaultlanguage[numerals=maghrib]{arabic}}


for indian numbers

\AtBeginDocument{\setdefaultlanguage[numerals=machriq]{arabic}}