Sometime ago, I tried to write Arabic in lyx but failed to do it. I asked in the lyx mailing list and Dekel Tsur, the person behind the support, thankfully tried to help me but we couldn't figure out why it didn't work for me. He checked my preferences file and the exported TeX file to no avail.
Now, after many many trials I come out to a conclusion which may reflect a bug somewhere in lyx, Mandrake, or pdflatex ... you decide! Resoultion: ------------------------- The problem is that lyx couldn't read a closing LaTeX code after an Arabic text. The problem: ------------------------- I open lyx and wrote some Arabic. View -> PDF (pdflatex) gives this error LaTeX Error: \begin{arabtext} on input line 12 ended by \end{document}. \end{document} Your command was ignored. Type I <command> <return> to replace it with another command, or <return> to continue without it. Not a good workaround: -------------------------------- File -> Export -> LaTeX If I run pdflatex on the latex file I got these errors LaTeX Warning: Unused global option(s): [arabic,english]. (./newfile1.aux) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/arabtex/uxnsh.fd) . . . . / . / ## ! LaTeX Error: \begin{arabtext} on input line 10 ended by \end{document}. See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation. Type H <return> for immediate help. ... l.13 \end{document} ? . > [1{/usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/pdftex.map}] (./newfile1.aux) . . . (\end occurred inside a group at level 1) </var/lib/texmf/pk/ljfour/arabtex/xns h14.600pk> Output written on newfile1.pdf (1 page, 9095 bytes). Transcript written on newfile1.log. Why not? ------------- The generated file contains the Arabic text plus strange arabic letters at the end!!! Better Workaround: --------------------------- Open the latex file in an editor and add a space before any closing LaTeX code within the \begin{arabtext} and the \end{arabtext}. I mean a space should be entered before \end{arabtext} and if you have any formatting say you centered some text you should go to the latex file and add a space before the \end{center} or you get errors like this: ! LaTeX Error: \begin{center} on input line 11 ended by \end{document}. Have I missed an obvious thing?! -- __/ __/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _\ _/ _\ _/ _/ \ / _\ unzir _/ aha Telecommunications Engineer Linux Registered User [EMAIL PROTECTED]://counter.li.org CIW, ICDL, MOUS. New Horizons CLC Riyadh, SA