On Mon, 15 Apr 2013, Mouse wrote:
[...] if I'm not mistaken, a number looks the "same" in arabic, because they are written left-to-right, that is, least significant digit first considered from right-to-left).I don't recall which order the digits are written in, and I don't have any Arabic text with numbers in it at ready hand to check.
I can confirm that numbers "look the same" when written in arabic as in english, modulo the choice of characters or glyphs used to represent the digits ("0123456789" or "٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩"). That is, the number written in english as "123" appears to be written in arabic from left to right as either "123" (<digit one><digit two><digit three>), or "١٢٣" (<arabic-indic digit one><arabic-indic digit two><arabic-indic digit three>).
However, I don't know whether typesetting numbers in arabic conceptually involves switching back and forth between the left-to-right order used by the text, and right-to-left order for numbers (like <push direction left-to-right><"1"><"2"><"3"><pop direction>), or whether it should all be done right-to-left, with the numbers written in little-endian order (like <direction right-to-left><"3"><"2"><"1">).
--apb (Alan Barrett)