greek/hebrew

[matt]

Hi,
I'm having trouble with greek and hebrew fonts with my
Word (Office X, iMac using OS X jaguar). Anyone solve a
similar problem?
thanks in advance,
matt

 

[Ben Miller]

matt said:

Hi,
I'm having trouble with greek and hebrew fonts with my
Word (Office X, iMac using OS X jaguar). Anyone solve a
similar problem?
thanks in advance,
matt

I've been trying to get Word X to display Hebrew fonts at all. Any clues?

Thanks,
Ben

 

[Repeating Rifle]

matt said:



I've been trying to get Word X to display Hebrew fonts at all. Any clues?

Thanks,
Ben

This is really not my bag. But a few years ago, for previous versions of
Word I remember seeing something about a language kit. I don't know if it
something you get from Apple, Microsoft, or both. Certainly, there is much
mentioned in Volume VI of Inside Macintosh. That was published in 1991 and I
have no idea how relevant it is today. Maybe a Google search will help.

Bill

 

[Ben Miller]

Repeating Rifle said:

This is really not my bag. But a few years ago, for previous versions of
Word I remember seeing something about a language kit. I don't know if it
something you get from Apple, Microsoft, or both. Certainly, there is much
mentioned in Volume VI of Inside Macintosh. That was published in 1991 and I
have no idea how relevant it is today. Maybe a Google search will help.

Bill

Thanks, Bill. I remember those language kits, too. OS X now natively
supports those languages so I think it would be a Word-specific issue. Off
to Google I ago...

== Ben

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Repeating Rifle said:



Thanks, Bill. I remember those language kits, too. OS X now natively
supports those languages so I think it would be a Word-specific issue. Off
to Google I ago...

Hi Guys,

Word for Mac does not support Hebrew. Installing fonts or language kits
will not help. There is no workaround that I'm aware of.

You can send suggestions for new features to Microsoft at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp>

Sorry, but I'm not sure about Greek.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Ben Miller]

Beth Rosengard said:

Hi Guys,

Word for Mac does not support Hebrew. Installing fonts or language kits
will not help. There is no workaround that I'm aware of.

You can send suggestions for new features to Microsoft at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp>

Sorry, but I'm not sure about Greek.

Thanks for providing that certainty, Beth.

== Ben

 

[Repeating Rifle]

Beth Rosengard said:



Thanks for providing that certainty, Beth.

== Ben

I am pretty sure that earlier versions of word were able to support Hebrew
and Arabic which read right to left. If you can word process right to left,
all you need more is a font to use.

Bill

 

[Beth Rosengard]

I am pretty sure that earlier versions of word were able to support Hebrew
and Arabic which read right to left. If you can word process right to left,
all you need more is a font to use.

I believe there is third party software available for Arabic and Hebrew, and
maybe Greek as well. I've seen two URLs posted in regard to this (I haven't
checked them out myself):

<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic.html>
<http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities_editors_macosx.html#mellel>

But I don't believe that MacWord has ever had support for right-to-left
reading languages. Maybe you're thinking of WinWord?

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Andreas Prilop]

But I don't believe that MacWord has ever had support for right-to-left
reading languages.

That's true - see <http://www.hf.uib.no/smi/ksv/ArabicProgs.html>
for details.

 

[M. Katz]

Read all about it, June 2002,

--Overview list of articles:
http://www.exegesis.org/AccordanceForumArchives/AD/2002 Archives/Digest_07_10_02.html
--Microsoft's Hebrew, Arabic snub:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/25808.html
--Anti-trust suit:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/25742.html
--Microsoft vs. Cultural Diversity
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2002/06/20020620.dml

Here's some choice bits from The Guardian. A group offered to PAY for
Microsoft's development work, and they said, No.

-------
Hebrew writers have long complained that Microsoft Office for the Mac
doesn't support the script: even though it's drawn from the Windows
codebase which does support Hebrew, and many other right-to-left
scripts to boot. The lack of support wasn't fixed in Office 2001:mac,
and despite rich language support for developers in Apple's Mac OS X,
Microsoft says it has no plans to add Hebrew to Office v.X:mac.

Even though it wouldn't cost Microsoft a cent, says Dov Cohen, a law
student who formed the National Academic Macintosh Administrators
group to lobby for Hebrew support in Microsoft products.

Cohen says that the CEO of Apple's Israeli representative Yeda offered
to underwrite the localization work, pay 1million shekels, and assure
a pre-order of 2,000 copies from Apple France - but Microsoft Israel
declined. (Yeda and Apple France didn't return our request for
confirmation).

"What's the problem?" asks Cohen. "Microsoft Israel tried giving
numerous excuses, such as it being unprofitable, or that they lack the
knowledge. But that can't be it, since it's not going to cost them a
nickle, and Yeda will hire Macintosh Developers for them that'll do
the job - so what's the catch ?"

"Can anyone explain why IE:mac and Outlook Express:mac support Zulu
and Portugeuse but not Russian or Hebrew?"

Or incredibly, Arabic and Korean too.
---------

<rant>
So if you're an Arabic speaking Israeli living in Korea, you're
(S.O.L.)^3.

Could someone please remind me what all of Microsoft's money is for if
they can't make software that about a Billion potential customers
could use? and the rest of what they do make is buggy and annoying.

This link ( http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT ) tells me that
they have $51.62 BILLION dollars in cash. $60 Billion or so more that
Gates siphoned off as CEO. That used to be your money, and mine, and
my employer's, and I for one am really upset about it. And you
probably are too. Everyone else I know is.

My friend said it best: "Microsoft isn't a software company, they're a
marketing company."

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi

To be a little fair to Microsoft I don't think support for right-to-left
languages was finalized in OSX in time for Microsoft to incorporate
right-to-left language support into Office X.

Word is more than a text processor. It is a full word processor that has to
do more than simply display characters. Getting right-to-left language
support working in a program as intricate as Word is not simple, quick or
easy. Think of what it would take to make right-to-left work properly with
data merge and all the Word fields.

Microsoft does not have thousands of Mac programmers hanging around to
tackle everything that they would like to accomplish. If you investigate the
complexities of fonts and UniCode fonts in particular you will soon come to
realize the enormity of the task of getting left-to-right working in Word.

I'm saying this not to make excuses, but because I am a programmer and
realize how difficult it can be to accomplish something that might look
fairly simple on the surface. It's not a matter of just incorporating
support of left-to-right fonts as handled by MacOS.

I searched Microsoft's web site but could not find anything about Hebrew or
left-to-right for Macintosh.

Don't be alarmed that right-to-left language support was not mentioned at
MacWorld. All of the features of Office 2004 were not revealed at MacWorld.
I don't know whether or not 2004 will support right-to-left languages, but I
do know that all of the features of the upcoming version have not yet been
revealed.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

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----------

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Sorry about the left-to-right and right-to-left dyslexia in this posting. I
hope that doesn't cloud the issue concerning complexity.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

All responses should be made to this newsgroup within the same thread.
Thanks.

About Microsoft MVPs:
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Before posting a "new" topic please be sure to search Google Groups to see
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----------

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

To be a little fair to Microsoft I don't think support for right-to-left
languages was finalized in OSX in time for Microsoft to incorporate
right-to-left language support into Office X.

According to the spokesman for Nisus Writer (supposed to be famous for
supporting right-to-left) whose booth I visited at MacWorld, OS X 10.3
Panther _still_ doesn't support right-to-left languages properly. He says
that Apple has got "about 93%" of the way there, but not all the way. And he
demonstrated. Although Nisus can, by a series of hacks, type Hebrew and
Arabic, the cursor remains at the right end of a line rather than tracking
the moving left end, and selecting a character and making it Bold mucks up
the whole thing, introducing spaces and altering the selection.

Until Apple really finalize right-to-left, you can't expect text software to
be able to do it properly.

But, as Jim says, there's lots of news about Office 2004 yet to be released.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X.
It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.

 

[Andreas Prilop]

Until Apple really finalize right-to-left, you can't expect text software to
be able to do it properly.

How come that Mozilla 1.3 works very well with right-to-left scripts (both
Arabic and Hebrew) even on Mac OS 9.1? Don't blame the operating system!

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

How come that Mozilla 1.3 works very well with right-to-left scripts (both
Arabic and Hebrew) even on Mac OS 9.1? Don't blame the operating system!

Mozilla doesn't write from right to letf. It only displays the text from
right to left. Beside that, I think I remember that the support for
displaying it properly has be re-written from the ground up.
Office (and most other apps) relies on the APIs provided by the system
for both displaying unicode (coming for Office 2004 as far as I've
heard) and right to left support.

Technically, my gueess is that Word will have no problem displaying
Hebrew and Arabic characters. It just won't have right to left.

Paul Berkowitz went to the Nisus boot during MacWorld SF and someone
there explained that they don;t support it either for the very same
reasons. It seems that Apple has implemented 93% of what is needed but
there are still missing pieces. Hopefully Apple will support the whole
thing sometime soon :-\ and MS will add that to Office in an update
(lets hope).


Corentin

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Andreas,

Mozilla simply needs to display characters. That's very simple compared to
what a Word processor has to do.

A bicycle and a jet plane are both forms of transportation and both have
tires, but the jet plane is considerably more complicated - even the tires.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

All responses should be made to this newsgroup within the same thread.
Thanks.

About Microsoft MVPs:
http://www.mvps.org/

Before posting a "new" topic please be sure to search Google Groups to see
if your question has already been answered.

An Excel add-in is available to help with this task.
<http://www.rondebruin.nl/Google.htm>

----------

 

[Shaul]

Well, I have news to Nisus people. There is alraedy an excellent word
processor that supports right-to-left very well. It is called Mellel,
available at http://www.redlers.com, and costs only $25.
Mellel also includes a very good implementation of table
(which Nisus people failed to do for so many years)
and many other unique features.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

Well, I have news to Nisus people. There is alraedy an excellent word
processor that supports right-to-left very well. It is called Mellel,
available at http://www.redlers.com, and costs only $25.

The question is: does Mellel use the standard API or did they have to
implement their own version of the drawing API to be able to handle
right to left ??

I gave a try to their application not so long ago and I failed to find
out how to use right to left for writing. No problem getting the text
alligned on the right side, but that's not what we need. Still not clear
to me. Anyway, if Mellel supports it properly, that's great news for
people writing with these alphabets.


Corentin

 

[Gene van Troyer]

The question is: does Mellel use the standard API or did they have to
implement their own version of the drawing API to be able to handle
right to left ??

I gave a try to their application not so long ago and I failed to find
out how to use right to left for writing. No problem getting the text
alligned on the right side, but that's not what we need. Still not clear
to me. Anyway, if Mellel supports it properly, that's great news for
people writing with these alphabets.

Ask Ori and Eyal Redler, who wrote the application. Off-hand, though, I
believe they wrote their own workaround for right-to-left text, since the
main point was to have an application that could properly do Hebrew and
Arabic. The Redlers are Israeli and wanted something that would do their
language in OSX. They had it working in Jaguar, which didn't have its own
right-to-left capability.

Gene van Troyer

 

[Shaul]

As far as I know Mellel has its own text engine.
They have full RTL implementation, better than anything else
I have seen (including Nisus for system 9).
You should try Mellel again and use their support if needed.
They are very responsive.
Regarding your specific question - at the top of the window,
next to the paragraph alignment cons, there is a direction
icon.