To make MBPro read Arabic

[leanne1001]

Hello ladies and gentlemen,
I bought a MacBook Pro 2.2GHz 2 day ago. I am a PC user.
I need help to make my MBP read Arabic, I tried the system preferences but that did not work.
Thanks for your time and your comments will be greatly appreciated.

[Magnus]

You mean so you can type in Arabic? System Preferences > International > Input Menu > Click on Arabic.

If that's not what you mean, please let us know what it is more exactly you're looking for.

[leanne1001]

Thanks for you reply,
I mean to read Arabic; when I went to Safari searching and going to Arabic websites, it gave me Arabic alphabets that are not connected with each other. when I copied and pasted them here (in your reply word document), it gave me full sentences.
I went to system preferences and ticked Arabic. However, that did not do the job.

[Magnus]

Well, I'm not exactly the person to advice you on this, but did you check on some of the other threads on Arabic? Like this or this. If you have Office for Mac that may be a problem (and you have to remove some fonts), and if I'm not mistaken Safari doesn't always display Arabic correctly, so perhaps try Firefox instead. But Zaid did say that the beta of upcoming Safari 3 works better.

But as I said, this is not really my area of expertise, so I hope someone who knows more pitches in

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Thanks Emiratesmac for your fair input. Safari can display Arabic websites even before version 3 (beta). What the original poster is referring to is the well documented MS fonts incompatibility with Safari.

Basically deleting those fonts as directed in earlier Emiratesmac post would do make Safari display Arabic pages correctly.

[leanne1001]

Thanks again guys,
I removed Arial and Times fonts from the library but nothing seemed to happen.
Do I need to replace them with something else? Or, are there father steps that I have missed?

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Originally Posted by leanne1001

Thanks again guys,
I removed Arial and Times fonts from the library but nothing seemed to happen.
Do I need to replace them with something else? Or, are there father steps that I have missed?

First make sure you've added Arabic language to your system by visiting the System Prefs > International.

Second, if you have installed MS Office for Mac, delete the mentioned fonts from your Home Library not the System library as Safari will read your Home (Name) > Library > Fonts for required operation fonts.

Do you see the green Crescent in flags menu beside the clcok?
Are you able to type Arabic in Text Edit?

[leanne1001]

Many thanks Ziad,
I did what you said and it works. !! This is strange!! is there any reason why deleting these files correct the problem?

I have got Office 2004 test drive, I am not going to buy it after the free period, I will wait a couple of months then I will buy Office 2008 and hopefully they will correct all the current problems. What do you think?

[spmcc123]

I reviewed various threads on displaying Arabic on the MacBook Pro (bought in Abu Dhabi) I don't need to type in Arabic, but I do need to accurately display Arabic text in Word files and websites. Am I correct:

1. Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac does not display Arabic fonts reliably, though Office for Windows does....? (There is no fix for this...)

2. To tweak Safari and other non-word applications, I need to delete the existing Arial and Times fonts in the User > Libray > Font directory...? (If I do, are these fonts no longer available for Word and other documents?)

3. Enable Arabic in System Preferences > International...?

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Originally Posted by spmcc123

I reviewed various threads on displaying Arabic on the MacBook Pro (bought in Abu Dhabi) I don't need to type in Arabic, but I do need to accurately display Arabic text in Word files and websites. Am I correct:

1. Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac does not display Arabic fonts reliably, though Office for Windows does....? (There is no fix for this...)

2. To tweak Safari and other non-word applications, I need to delete the existing Arial and Times fonts in the User > Libray > Font directory...? (If I do, are these fonts no longer available for Word and other documents?)

3. Enable Arabic in System Preferences > International...?

Let's put this issue straight… Arial and Times becomes available once you install Mac OSX, the two font versions we request you to remove are those weird couple added to your system when you install MS Office.
Safari, Text Edit, and some other Apple applications displays Arabic properly - out of the box - but once you install MS Office you need to manage additional incompatible Times and Arial fonts.

MS Word 2004 CAN'T display Arabic, Only Excel 2004 can with very limited capability. You may use alternative powerful Word-processing applications such as Mellel or Nisus.

As Explained elsewhere in this forum, adding Arabic language to your system is easy, just visit International Preferences and you should be able to at least type in Text Edit and also open and share Arabic Microsoft Word documents from Text Edit.