Arabic Mac OS X localization progress

[Magnus]

I'd suggest contacting any of the sellers on our AppleIDX page.

[crystal]

You can contact Thlgq about his keyboard that he is trying to sell. Read this thread.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Great Crystal, I forgot about this keyboard. I think macomar is in Norway! if so, you can ask the dealer to order an English/Arabic keyboard from the States which may take 6 weeks for it to arrive as I remember.

Otherwise pay our member (thldg) for his keyboard and shipment for faster arrival.

[macomar]

Thanks for the help. I have mailed him about the keyboard.

Really really poor performance from Apple Scandinavia. I have needed that for a long time. I have used small stickies and glue, but they tend to fall off...

[m3yalla]

what happned this? no news? was excited. now gettign upset

[Zaid Al Hilali]

I am sure the team are finalizing their first version. Let's be patient.

[DXB Law]

FYI, Tiger already supports Arabic word processing and permits RTL text entry (Text Edit has a menu option for "Writing Direction" as does Mail for that matter). The two applications mentioned by earlier posters -- Nisus and Mellel -- support writing in Arabic very well. I personally use Nisus.

The problem is not the operating system. The problem is, dare I say it, Microsoft, because MS Office 2004 applications do not support Unicode or RTL and therefore do not support Arabic text. The unfortunate reality is the vast majority of business and government users in the U.A.E. and elsewhere in the region are using MS Office for their word processing needs (mirroring the market share that MS Office has worldwide).

Nisus words well enough as a stand-alone product, but the import/export of documents between Nisus and MS Word is not entirely seamless.

The posters are correct that Pages does not support RTL text entry very well, but even if Apple improves Pages to the extent that it becomes the best Arabic wordprocessing app in the world, it will not solve the compatibility problem. When I write in English, nobody else in the world needs to know I am working on a Mac and not a PC -- in other word, in English, my use of a Mac does not affect my ability to collaborate on documents. When somebody sends me an Arabic document there are always problems working as formatting gets lost or disrupted with the shift to/from Nisus.

What I am really hoping is that the next Mac version of office will support Unicode and RTL text entry.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Totally agree with your statement DXB Law, the issue of Arabic incompatibility on any Mac application is not Apple's problem perhaps as much as coding/creating each program differently by each software company without trying to follow the standards while addressing compatibility matters across Arabic applications if they ever thought about it.