Encoding and rendering of Arabic “Allah”

Pim Rietbroek / 22 July 2011

When typing “llah” in Arabic in a word processor such as MS Word, many fonts substitute a
precomposed theonym glyph:
‫ ﻝ‬+ ‫ ﻝ‬+ ‫( ﷲ = ﻩ‬this example shows the Times New Roman font on Windows XP)
Note that šadda ( ّ, U+0651) and dagger alif ( ٰ , U+0670) have silently been added in the
rendering, although these characters have not been typed – and although they are not present
in the text string.
When a text containing the characters lām + lām + hāʾ (but rendered in Word as ‫ )ﷲ‬is
imported in Adobe Indesign ME with the Tasmeem plugin, only these letters are rendered and
not either šadda or dagger alif. If the latter are to be rendered as well, they need to be inserted
after the second lam: first šadda, then dagger alif.
The whole string in Adobe Indesign ME with the Tasmeem plugin will properly be:
lām + lām + šadda + dagger alif + hāʾ

Note that when such a text string is copied back from Adobe InDesign ME to a word
processor such as MS Word with a font like Times New Roman, the rendering will be faulty:
‫ﻟﻠّٰﻪ‬. Removing šadda and dagger alif will make the precomposed theonym glyph reappear: ‫ﷲ‬.
The same mechanism occurs when typing “Allah” with the definite article.