Font Selection:  It is necessary to select a font that is able to display Unicode characters.  Andalus, Arial Unicode MS, Arabic Simplified, Arabic Transparent, Lucida Sans Unicode, Microsoft Sans Serif, Tahoma, Times New Roman, and Traditional Arabic are able to display some of the Unicode fonts.  Arial Unicode MS font displays a very wide range of Unicode characters.  For most Arabic text viewing, Arabic Transparent or Traditional Arabic fonts should be suitable. 

However, if you experience any difficulties, Arial Unicode MS font should be tried. The Times New Roman font that came with Windows 2000 displayed is a Unicode capable font, and it displays Arabic, English,  Greek, and Hebrew fonts nicely.

Netscape Font Selection: First, click the mouse on Edit.

Second, click the mouse on Preferences. 

Third, click the mouse on Fonts under Appearance.  Then select Unicode Encoding and a Unicode compatible font. Select a font that displays the appropriate target language or languages.  

Fourth, click the mouse on OK to finalize the selection.

Character Set: Next, it is necessary to select a Character Set that includes the  Arabic Unicode number range. Often, Unicode(UTF-8) will be satisfactory.

First, click the mouse on View .

Second, click the mouse on Character Set.  Third, click the mouse on Unicode (UTF-8).  Fourth, click the mouse on Set Default Character Set.  This assures that Unicode (UTF-8) will remain after the program is restarted.

Finally, click the mouse on Reload to activate the new settings.  

After Netscape has a Unicode compatible font, and the Character Set is Unicode (UTF-8), the Arabic fonts should display properly.  

Test settings:  There are a couple of sites that have Unicode font pages.  The Unicode decimal number range for Arabic is 1536-1791, 64336-65023, and 65136-65279.  If Netscape has been properly configured, the Arabic fonts should display properly.

Another web site has an excellent chart of the decimal number ranges of Unicode.  The 1001-2000 , 64001-64999 , and 65001-65536

Hopefully, these comments and pictures will provide you with enough information so that you will be able to view  Arabic Unicode text.  A similar procedure is followed to display Greek and Hebrew Unicode characters.  First select a Unicode font and then select the appropriate Encoding scheme.  Finally, test the settings by viewing a page that has the appropriate decimal number for the Unicode language fonts.

Normal settings:  To return to your normal settings, select the Western (ISO-8859-1) Character Set and the font of your choice.  However, if you have chosen a Unicode font that can display all of the languages that you plan to view, you can leave your browser's configuration set to view Unicode fonts.

There is additional help for Netscape users at Allan Wood's site.

If there are difficulties with these browser and email configurations suggestions, please let me know.  I have not been able to do many tests.

Last edited 06-11-2000