asa sdsd 

What version of Trados Studio are you using and please can you provide a small test file... preferably an sdlxliff.  Zip it and you can attach to your reply using the "Insert" menu.

Dear Paul,

Thanks for your quick response. Kindly find attached the test file and a screen shot - Version used is Trados 2022 version 17.0.5.147557

You will see the modifications made to diacritics causing letters to be disconnected where unmodified letters are connected in their contexttest.txt_en-US_ar-SA.rar

Here is an example of selection in Microsoft Word of a word with diacritics

Here is another Example of removing a diacritic without affecting the letter and note that when remove the diacritic, it only removes the diacritic without the letter. You can see the letter is still in black, the strikeout is under the diacritic in the first line. To illustrate this I remove a letter and you can find that a letter is removed with its diacritic in red in the second line

asa sdsd 

Can you show me this as if you were showing it to a child for the very first time?  What keys are you pressing to remove or add a diacritic without affecting the underlying letter?  I don't even know where to start explaining this to a development team and I'm not going to just throw it over the fence!

If you can help me to explain this, keeping in mind I don't speak Arabic and I don't even know which part of the script is a letter or a sequence of letters, then I am very willing to make sure we are in a position to address it.

asa sdsd 

ok... I think I've got it!!  Can you look at this and let me know if it's correct?

I got you. Let me explain this simply. In Microsoft Word, they treat every single character as a separate character, so you write a letter it is a character and when you write a diacritic, it is a separate character. As for how they appear on word whether above the letter or below the letter, this is something else. So, in older versions of Trados, programmers did this, so when you delete a diacritic, the editor removes the diacritic alone as it is a separate character. However, in the new editor of Trados 2022, you made the letter and the diacritic whether above the letter or below the letter one unit, so when you move either of them, the other is removed. You have to find a way to separate the two or even inherit from the old editor its characteristics. I guess the old editor was a class, so you can inherit from the class its features and add your new updates, if any. As for the keys I use to write or remove a diacritic, when you install Arabic Keyboard, the shift + keys are activated. When you press shift + Q,A,W,E,R,A,S,X,` the Arabic diacritics are activated in any editor

You are right Paul, but try it in review mode as there is no problem in translation mode because you will translate from scratch or using MT and edit it in translation mode; this is not a problem. But if you are an editor like me and you want to deliver your files in review mode, the client needs to see the changes made to assess whether or not you have done it right. So, I am focusing on review mode for this reason. When you edit a diacritic in review mode, it does not show up; and here the problem pops up. Try the example you made in the video in review mode and you will find it hard to edit diacritics.

asa sdsd 

Thanks for that explanation... it supplements my understanding well.  I learned something new today... always good!

asa sdsd said:

try it in review mode as there is no problem in translation mode because you will translate from scratch or using MT and edit it in translation mode; this is not a problem. But if you are an editor like me and you want to deliver your files in review mode, the client needs to see the changes made to assess whether or not you have done it right.

Indeed... but it is exactly the same problem.  The only difference is now track changes (which works as expected) is removing the possibility to see that only a diacritic was changed because of the way the problem occurs generally.  If the Editor handled this correctly then the track changes would display it correctly too.  We just need to fix the underlying problem.

I have been trying to reach you about a month ago through the online chat system, but no one could understand me as you did. Thank you

asa sdsd 

I have tested a little in an experimental build the dev team are working on.  Perhaps you can comment on this for me and I can take this back to the dev team to improve it?

This is very good as a start, especially the last example when you deleted every character separately; this is perfect. But it will be better if you use the track and every single character is removed from the view as you did in the last example but while the track is on. This is exactly what I am talking about like in word, it removes the character physically and in view while track is on.

This is very good as a start, especially the last example when you deleted every character separately; this is perfect. But it will be better if you use the track and every single character is removed from the view as you did in the last example but while the track is on. This is exactly what I am talking about like in word, it removes the character physically and in view while track is on.

asa sdsd 

And just to complete my lesson for the day I asked ChatGPT for an explanation of these letters!  I asked this:

My problem of course is I don't know if it's correct or not!  But if it is it's a very good way to avoid time trying to research the answer and get a direct answer to a direct question right away!

I have been using ChatGPT for a while and it is really changing the face of entire industries!! I hope you got my reply and that it is clear enough Paul

https://we.tl/t-UkkvQt49uq 
just in case the video I recorded does not show properly here.

https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/arabic-diacritics-important-but-neglected/

to help you understand further what these diacritics do Paul.

They are very very important in Arabic language.

Sameh Elsharkawy 

Thanks Sameh, this was all really helpful for me!

I tagged you in the Beta community as I also created a short video for the team working on the current Alpha build that uses a completely new editor and already does a much better job with these problems.  You'll note they have not tackled track changes yet so this feedback could not have been better timed!