I am a regular reader of such docs, and if I have Arabic fonts
I'd be writing them, too. I would want to use phrase tags to
mark off the shifts. Thus, if I were writing an article on
the Madrasah al-Firdaus in Aleppo, in English with embedded
Arabic, I do something like
<p>The eastern facade of the Madrasah al-Firdaus bears one of
the earliest <i>tiraz</i> bands in the Ayyubid architecture of
Aleppo. Its inscription reads <phrase lang=arabic>xxxx xxxxx xxx
xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx</phrase>, and the three words
<phrase lang=arabic>xxxx xxx xxxxxxxx</phrase> were originally highlighted
in red paint.
That has advantages for manipulating the SGML that go beyond
the problem of rendering.
Regards,
-- Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)