TeX, the powerful computer typesetting system by D.E. Knuth, and LaTeX, its extension by L. Lamport to handle structured documents, have both been adapted to handle passages of arabic script. Our new system, ArabTeX, will accept as input an ASCII encoding of the standard transliteration of Arabic, and will generate the arabic writing with a full complement of vowel marks, automatically producing most of the usual ligatures, and obeying the common writing rules. Likewise, or additionally, the standard transliteration can also be generated from the same input. The notation is easily readable and suitable for electronic transmission. For non-vocalized writing, a reduced input notation is available, as are some extensions for other languages using the arabic script, and for reproducing erroneous or archaic documents.

ArabTeX will run on a wide range of hardware platforms in conjunction with any TeX implementation that can be extended by loading additional macros and additional fonts. No special equipment is required.