The package provides an Arabic and Farsi script support for TeX without the need of any external pre-processor, and in a way that is compatible with babel. The bi-directional capability supposes that the user has a TeX engine that knows the four primitives \beginR, \endR, \beginL and \endL. That is the case in both the TeX--XeT and e-TeX engines. Arabi will accept input in several 8-bit encodings, including UTF-8.

Arabi can make use of a wide variety of Arabic and Farsi fonts, and provides one of its own. PDF files generated using Arabi may be searched, and text may be copied from them and pasted elsewhere.

See also arabtex.

The author is Youssef Jabri. The package is Copyright © 2006 Youssef Jabri.