The macro distributed with this documentation calculates the “abjadi” value of selected Arabic or Persian text in Nisus Writer. The result will be displayed as a prompt and put on the system clipboard. To effectively use this macro, and to read all the text of this documentation, you will need to have the Arabic system resources installed on your computer.
Each Arabic letter has traditionally been assigned a numeric value. For example, the name ÂÔÕÓÂÓÒœ has a total abjadi value of 92. For purposes of calculating the numeric value, all forms of « (aleph) are considered the same, the Persian Û is considered the same as », ı as Ã,— as ˛, ¯ as „, and È and Δ as Í. Diacritical marks and hamzas do not affect the numerical value.
Beginning with version 1.2, two versions of this macro are provided, one for Western abjadi values and the second for Eastern values. Thanks to John Hunwick of Northwestern University for pointing this difference out to me. Previous versions of this macro calculated only the Easter abjadi values. The differences are as follows:
Letter Eastern Western
” 60 300
‘ 300 1000
⁄ 1000 90
’ 90 60
How to Use
You can copy the code from the accompanying Nisus Writer Macro file “Abjadi Value” into your default macro file to make both macros available. Alternately, you can open the macro file itself.
Once a macro file containing the Abjadi Value code has been opened, select the Arabic text for which you wish to calculate the numeric value. Then choose either “Abjadi Value (Eastern)” or “Abjadi Value (Western)” from the Macros submenu of the Tools menu.
Version History
1.2 Versions for calculating abjadi values by both Eastern and Western reckoning included. Also, I had forgotten to include code for the letter Δ. This is now fixed. Earlier versions will count this letter (ASCII 198) as zero, instead of ten.
1.1 More than doubled the speed by parsing selected text with the Macro Programming Dialect instead of the Menu Command Dialect. As a result of this change, the macro can not accurately calculate the abjadi values of blocks of text larger than 2,047 characters (the maximum length of text variables in the Nisus Macro Programming Dialect). I do not anticipate this will be a problem.
Reference
See pages 259-260 of A.K.S. Lambton’s Persian Grammar.
Abjadi Value macro and documentation copyright 1995 by George Maschke. All rights reserved. This macro and accompanying documentation may be freely distributed, but not sold. Send comments to wtlefercus@aol.com.
The list below provides the Eastern numerical values of the letters of the Arabic alphabet. Differences between Eastern and Western reckoning are pointed out in the table above:
