Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic on Mac response

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 07 Apr 2008
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Arabic on Mac response

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1)
Date: 07 Apr 2008
From:Arabic on Mac response
Subject:Dil Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>

> A colleague of mine, a computer consultant at the Language Resource  
> Center
> at Michigan University, told me that the problem with Arabic on  
> MSOffice on
> the Mac is an Apple problem.  He said that his contacts at Apple have
> informed him that they have not found it to be worth their time to  
> develop
> products for Arabic.  They might in the future, but it's not a  
> priority.

I've had people tell me this as well, but I honestly don't see how it  
could possibly be true, given that:
1- the Apple developed and otherwise very basic program Textedit works  
fine with Arabic, allowing full bi-directionality
2- the Mail program works fine with Arabic, also allowing full bi- 
directionality
3- other programs work more or less with Arabic, if not with full bi- 
directionality, INCLUDING MS Excell, into which you can paste Arabic  
text and it displays, lines up, and prints reasonably
4- Many other programs on the Mac work fine with Arabic, including  
most browsers (inlcuding Apple's own Safari), Mellel, Nisus, Indesign  
ME, etc.
5- ONLY MS Word actually 'eats' and destroys the Arabic that is in any  
text you read into it, including Arabic from MS Word documents created  
on the PC.  Other programs may not display things correctly, but they  
don't actively destroy the Arabic.
6- Only Microsoft ships its Apple office products with a font that  
automatically installs that actively WRECKS the Arabic on your  
browsers, so that you have to do a search and destroy mission to  
restore Arabic functionality whenever you install an MS program on  
your computer.

It is actually true that when OS X first came out it did not provide  
Arabic support, but that deficit was soon fixed, and has been fixed  
for several years now.  There has been nothing for Microsoft to wait  
for Apple to do for years.  Microsoft clearly know how to deal with  
Arabic script and bi-directionality, since they do it in the same  
product on a different platform, and clearly Apple is providing them  
the resources to do it on the Mac.  They have simply decided they  
won't do it.

IM(not so)HO

Dil

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