<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Arabic-L: Tue 08 Apr 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To post messages to the list, send them to <a href="mailto:arabic-l@byu.edu">arabic-l@byu.edu</a>]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="mailto:listserv@byu.edu">listserv@byu.edu</a> with first line reading:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> unsubscribe arabic-l ]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Directory------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1) Subject:Arabic on Mac</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Date: 08 Apr 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From:Knut S. Vikør" <<a href="mailto:knut.vikor@ahkr.uib.no">knut.vikor@ahkr.uib.no</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Subject:Arabic on Mac</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; ">I just joined the list today, but there seem already to be issues relating to my Arabic Mac interest...<br><br>The colleague had got it almost right, but just mixed up the culprit...<br><br>The attitude reported is that of Microsoft, not Apple. The reason is that Microsoft Office for Mac is to be as compatible as possible with Office for Windows. Support for Arabic is handled differently on the Mac and on Windows, so for Microsoft to support Arabic (and Hebrew) on the Mac, they would have to change that code element in Office, which would make it less compatible with its own Windows product. That could be done, but they made a choice several years ago (one must assume based on size of market base) that this was too costly, as they would then have to re-do it for every upgrade, and have refrained from doing so. It is part of the same calculation that stops them from supporting macros in the new Word 2008 for Mac: It can be done, but it is too costly, so they are not doing it.<br><br>For the technically minded, there was a small Catch-22 involved. Both Mac and Windows accept a type of fonts called OpenType. The element of OpenType that handles Arabic context analysis is something called Uniscribe, which was developed by Microsoft (which also made the OpenType system). But uniscribe did not do context analysis under the Mac system - and since it was Microsoft that owns and developed it, there was nothing Apple could do except to sit quietly and wait for Microsoft to upgrade this tool so that Apple also could use it... For this reason, Apple developed its own Arabic fonts, using a separate technology, and could not use the Arabic OpenType fonts you find on the Internet (Mellel and InDesign can, but that is because they developed in-house OpenType solutions, or hacks to be precise).<br><br>This last explains Dil's point 6, by the way: The font that wrecks Safari is Microsoft "Times New Roman", which the installer puts instead of the older Apple version of the same font. Apple's Times NR does not have Arabic characters. Microsoft's does, but it is an OpenType font. SO, before, when a web page with Arabic text asks for display in Times New Roman, Safari did not find any Arabic in that font, and substituted a real Apple Arabic font instead. Now, with the Microsoft Times NR installed, Safari *does* find Arabic characters in the requested font, and displays them. But since Times NR is an OpenType font, they cannot display as ligatures, only as separate characters.<br><br>In the latest Mac OS, 10.5, Apple finally has got support for Arabic OpenType fonts, I do not know yet if this is because Microsoft has relented and upgraded uniscribe, or whether Apple has made its own parallel hacks to handle them. But, as far as I have seen (I haven't upgraded to 10.5 / Word 2008 myself yet), Word still does not handle Arabic, so there were also other problems involved.<br><br>Knut S. Vikør<br>(not a computer person, this is just an interest)<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">End of Arabic-L: 08 Apr 2008</div></div></div></body></html>