Word unsuitable for Arabic typesetting

[glyphjockey]

Originally Posted by bmann

I do all of my Arabic in Word, which does support right-to-left, then print to PDF. Place the PDF in the InDesign.

I know I'm responding to an older message, but I really want to post about the unsuitability of using Word to typeset Arabic. Paradoxically, Farsi script, and other languages written in derivations of Arabic script, actually work better than Arabic does in Word. In Arabic, the position of marks like fathatan and shadda is often entirely incorrect. If there's a way to use kashidas, I haven't found it yet.

Honestly, for short translations, I'd rather choose my medial glyphs by hand from the Glyphs menu in English InDesign than try to fix the unacceptable PDF output of Arabic from Word.