Which package to use with memoir for arabic support with vowels support?

Question

I am planning on writing a book with LaTeX. I have read that KOMO-Script and Memoir are good packages for writing books.

Due to the easy english documentation of memoir, i am picking it up first.

My book would include Arabic text along with English texts. Also, the arabic text would include vowels signs.

Which package is compatible with memoir for handling arabic text with vowels signs ?

Answer 1

One way to go is the XePersian package which has excelent support for both right-to-left and left-to-righ texts. Although it is primarily developed for Persian language, it can be used for Arabic text as well, since both languages share the same alphabet. It is possible to be used with memoir and in case you have function plots and other vector graphics, it works fine with tikz. Here is a minimal example of Arabic text in a memoir documentclass with short vowels and an inline Latin text:

\documentclass{memoir}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{xepersian}
\begin{document}
السّلام عَليكم
\lr{Peace to you too!}
\end{document}

You can have longer passages of English (latin letters in general) using latin environment. Note that you should compile this XePersian with XeLateX.

There is also a package called ArabTex but I'm not familiar with that.