Special Arabic characters – attempt #2

Seems to be a character count maximum, my last post didn’t finish, so here it is again.

I just downloaded that trial version of the latest PhotoShop, installation was perfect. I then download and installed all the latest updates, without problem.

Here is the system information provided by PhotoShop:

Adobe Photoshop Version: 9.0 (9.0×196)
Operating System: Windows XP
Version: 5.1 Service Pack 2
System architecture: AMD CPU Family:6, Model:6, Stepping:2 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Physical processor count: 2
Processor speed: 1600 MHz
Built-in memory: 2047 MB
Free memory: 1425 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 1763 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 55 %
Image cache levels: 6
Serial number: Tryout Version
Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\ Temporary file path: C:\DOCUME~1\BRIAN~1.MUS\LOCALS~1\Temp\ Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
Scratch volume(s):
Startup, 37.3G, 12.5G free
Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set

I’m considering buying a license to PhotoShop. I downloaded the trial version to test out how well I liked the program, how easy it was to use, etc. So far it has failed miserably. I’m new to PhotoShop, but very experienced with computers in general.

The problem – I want to insert a horizontal text object in a layer. I’m using a TT Arabic font called Mudar MT. The font was installed using Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.1, and it installed without problem.

I’ve successfully used this font previously in MS Word (many times). I never did find keystrokes to enter the characters I want, so I used the system’s Character Map program. For most fonts, Character Map will provide a keypad sequence to produce the desired character (example: Times New Roman, Spanish ñ is Alt + 0241). However with the Mudar MT Arabic font, no keystroke information is provided, only the hexadecimal character code (example 0x21). So, in order to get the characters I want into a Word document, I select them in Character Map and copy/paste them into Word. It works, no problems. Word displays exactly what I want.

The exact same procedure produces characters in PhotoShop, but the wrong ones! Completely wrong, not even close. The font is Mudar MT, but the type faces do not correspond to the type faces in either Character Map or Word.

The ASCII codes for the characters I want are:
0xEA 0x86 0x79 0xEB 0x21 0x86 0x76 0xBD 0x61

Opening a Word document which correctly displays these characters, I copy/paste them into PhotoShop. Wrong type faces!

So far I have not found any tool in PhotoShop that is the equivalent of Character Map (visual character selection). I have not found any glyph window. Why is this happening, and how can I get my Arabic characters to display in PhotoShop the same way they display in Word?