How to use tfm font with “LAE” encoding with xelatex & lualatex

Question

I have this example of writing arabic with tfm font which work fine with pdflatex, the font is provided from arabi package.

https://ctan.org/tex-archive/language/arabic/arabi

\documentclass{article}
%\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[LAE]{fontenc}

\TeXXeTstate=1 % to anable right to left writing 

\begin{document}

\fontencoding{LAE}\fontfamily{aealyermook} \selectfont 

\beginR
نص عربي
123 

\end{document}

My hope is writing with this font in xelatex and lualatex

Answer 1

In this case, there’s no need to struggle with older encodings, because you can get a .ttf version of ae_AlYermook from the Debian package fonts-arabeyes, and the .sfd FontForge source from GitLab.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[novoc]{arabluatex}
\newfontfamily\arabicfont[Script=Arabic]{AlYarmook}
\begin{document}
\txarb{الأول: في الدلالة على وجود للمبدأ الأول}
\end{document}

Since this is a unicode version of the font, tools such as pdftotext extract the correct text from the PDF.

It is indeed possible to use older fonts and encodings in documents to be compiled with xetex or luatex. But the results become less satisfactory, and the text’s accessibility worse, the more complex the script. For example, you’re unlikely to notice problems if you set a word or two in uncials from the bookhands package. However, Arabic script is many times more complex than uncials.