Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic Word Processor for Mac OS X

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon12 Sep 2003
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Arabic Word Processor for Mac OS X

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1)
Date: 12 Sep 2003
From:Dil Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
Subject:Arabic Word Processor for Mac OS X

As you Mac users must be aware, OS X has had imperfect Arabic
solutions.  You can type Arabic in TextEdit, but it doesn't have a way
to change the direction of a paragraph, so the punctuation is mostly
misplaced.  A few programs actively destroy Arabic (like BBEdit, whose
slogan is that it is software that doesn't suck, but if you open a text
file with Unicode Arabic in it, let me tell you, it sucks).  InDesign
ME (and probably an Arabic version of Quark as well) are now available.
  InDesign ME does a great job, but it is a very expensive and
complicated solution if what you wanted was just a word procesor, not a
powerful page layout program.  Nisus, whose System 9 program did
Arabic, has come out with an OS X product that does not do Arabic,
although it will be added somewhere down the line.  Anyway, things were
getting frustrating.

That is why I'm happy to inform those of you who have not yet heard
that there is now a word processing program that does Arabic
reasonably.  It is called Mellel, and is listed on the Apple Site
(under OS X productivity software downloads).  You can try a test
version, and a license is only about $25.  I haven't done much with it,
so there could be hidden problems, but it does have text direction, and
when you are doing right to left, it puts the punctuation in the right
place.  It seems to be able to deal with most (possibly not all) Arabic
fonts.  I'm sure it has features that would take some getting used to.

I would be very interested in posting one or more reviews of this
software, so if any of you have time to run it through its paces, write
up your conclusions and send it in.

Dil

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End of Arabic-L: 12 Sep 2003