Update: a newer version available here

As per my previous post here, I’ve made some improvements to my method for proper Arabic rendering in a dynamic TextField using ActionScript 2.0.

An ActionSctipt 3.0 version available here

Many thanks to all reviewers, your comments were very helpful bringing this version available, now you can use and test my new parseArabic method ..

Requirements:

1. Dynamic TextField
2. HTML Enabled TextField
3. Pre-Defined TextFormat
4. Arabic Fonts must include a complete Arabic Presentation Forms-B (glyphs from FE70 to FEFE according to the Unicode Standard 5.2)

Features Supported:

1. Embedding Fonts (just put a dynamic textfield on-stage and select at least Basic Latin (95 glyphs) and Arabic (1088 glyphs) from the Character Embedding menu).
2. Arabic Ligatures.
3. Word Wrapping.
4. Bi-Directional text.
5. HTML Text.
6. Loading External text.

Features Not Supported:

1. Arabic Diacritics.

Fixed Bugs:

1. Correct Arabic Ligatures with/without embedding fonts
2. Correct Brackets Directions
3. Clean Line-Breaks

Here is an example works with this external XML file:

download the above example here

Note:
When you try to select and copy the above text into a static TextField it will display Arabic properly as well, just another benefit of this method, but if you paste the copied text into any other text editor you will see an alien version instead!