How can I get Word to show Arabic script?

[Sohrob]

Hi, I need to be able to read Arabic documents in Microsoft Word. I
know it's possible, because my friends can do it. I opened/enabled
the Arabic font Geeza in Font Book, but it only shows up as blocks
when select or type in it in Word, and Arabic in documents does not
show up.
I believe it may have something to do with the symbols. Usually in
Word (I'm coming from PC land) you can choose all kinds of Greek,
latin, and Asian symbols, including Arabic script. But when I go to
insert symbol in Word I have only one page of symbols to choose from.
Is this a related phenomenon? Please help, I can't get my Arabic
homework.

- Sohrob

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi, I need to be able to read Arabic documents in Microsoft Word. I
know it's possible, because my friends can do it. I opened/enabled
the Arabic font Geeza in Font Book, but it only shows up as blocks
when select or type in it in Word, and Arabic in documents does not
show up.

I guess you have Office X. Office 2004 has problems with right-to-left, but
it should at least properly disply the characters.
If you have MacOS X 10.3.x you shoudl try opening the document in TextEdit. I
know it supports Unicode (and I have no idea for right-to-left).

I believe it may have something to do with the symbols. Usually in
Word (I'm coming from PC land) you can choose all kinds of Greek,
latin, and Asian symbols, including Arabic script. But when I go to
insert symbol in Word I have only one page of symbols to choose from.
Is this a related phenomenon? Please help, I can't get my Arabic
homework.

Greek for instance can be coded with the number of characters available on
regular font sets. Arabic requires Unicode (which provides a lot lot more
possibilities for character coding).

Corentin

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

I guess you have Office X. Office 2004 has problems with right-to-left, but
it should at least properly disply the characters.
If you have MacOS X 10.3.x you shoudl try opening the document in TextEdit. I
know it supports Unicode (and I have no idea for right-to-left).




Greek for instance can be coded with the number of characters available on
regular font sets. Arabic requires Unicode (which provides a lot lot more
possibilities for character coding).

Corentin

--
--- Mac:MS MVP (Francophone) ---
http://www.mvps.org/
MVPs are not MS employees... / Les MVP ne travaillent pas pour MS...
Retirez NoSpam de mon adresse pour m'écrire / Remove NoSpam to e-mail me

It seems as if ms-word for mac doesn't support unicode as well as it ought
to. I think your best bet is the redlers word processor
http://www.redlers.com/ I don't use it myself but I hear it has much better
support for unicode

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

It seems as if ms-word for mac doesn't support unicode as well as it ought
to. I think your best bet is the redlers word processor
http://www.redlers.com/ I don't use it myself but I hear it has much better
support for unicode

Will Mellel open Word documents ??
I searched the documentation and it seems the only option through Mellel is
to use files in RTF format.... I'm not sure Mellel would be then answer here.

Nisus Writer Express claims to be MS Word compatible, but I don't know what
they exactly mean by that (eg through RTF as well ??). You can always
download the 30 trial version.
http://www.nisus.com/free/express.php

Corentin

 

[Andreas Prilop]

Greek for instance can be coded with the number of characters available on
regular font sets. Arabic requires Unicode

No.
<http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/ISO8859/8859-6.TXT>
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic.html6>
<http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/WINDOWS/CP1256.TXT>
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic.win>

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

Will Mellel open Word documents ??
I searched the documentation and it seems the only option through Mellel is
to use files in RTF format.... I'm not sure Mellel would be then answer here.

Nisus Writer Express claims to be MS Word compatible, but I don't know what
they exactly mean by that (eg through RTF as well ??). You can always
download the 30 trial version.
http://www.nisus.com/free/express.php

Corentin

--
--- Mac:MS MVP (Francophone) ---
http://www.mvps.org/
MVPs are not MS employees... / Les MVP ne travaillent pas pour MS...
Retirez NoSpam de mon adresse pour m'écrire / Remove NoSpam to e-mail me

This is what I found on their website.

Multilingual support

a.. Export and import to RTF
b.. Export and import to .doc
c.. Full Unicode support
d.. Chinese, Japanese and Korean input support
e.. Full Arabic and Persian support
f.. Full Hebrew support
g.. Full Greek and Coptic support
h.. Full support for Cyrillic languages
i.. Special setup for writing in multiple languages
j.. Export using 21 different language encodings (text)
k.. Import using 21 different language encodings (text)
l.. Ancient language support (Thaana, Etruscan, etc.)
They claim that they can open doc files. I guess it may fail if you do
something advanced. Hoever, it seems as if Word for Mac can't always open
doc files that come from a PC and vice versa.

/ Fredrik

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

b.. Export and import to .doc

Nice! That can be useful... I wonder what level of support they have
(TextEdit for instance importas and exports .doc but the application
can't display complex tables or embedded graphics). Anyway, some support
is always better than none )

Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

No.
<http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/ISO8859/8859-6.TXT>
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic.html6>
<http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/WINDOWS/CP1256.TXT>
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic.win>

You mean a regular, non-unicode font can encode all the variations fo
these alphabets with the information for ligature and so forth ? I
thought it required Unicode :-\ I know there was some support for Arabic
in MacOS 9 (without Unicode fonts) but as far as I heard it was far from
perfect (I really couldn't tell myself).

Corentin

 

[Mark Hurvitz]

Will Mellel open Word documents ??
I searched the documentation and it seems the only option through Mellel is
to use files in RTF format.... I'm not sure Mellel would be then answer here.

Nisus Writer Express claims to be MS Word compatible, but I don't know what
they exactly mean by that (eg through RTF as well ??). You can always
download the 30 trial version.
http://www.nisus.com/free/express.php

Corentin

Nisus Writer Express opens RTF files and our native file format for
saving is RTF. We also open (and can save ".doc" files and ".dot"
files.

That written Nisus Writer Express does not fully support BiDirectional
text *BECAUSE THE APPLE OPERATING SYSTEM DOES NOT CURRENTLY (PANTHER)
SUPPORT BIDIRECTIONAL TEXT!* Anyone who is intersted in the long story
(a history going back nearly 15 years) of how Nisus Writer has handled
BiDirectional text and expects to handle BiDirectional text in the
future is welcome to check our Web site:

History:
<http://www.nisus.com/NisusWriter/Support/Tips/LanguageKitsHistory.php>
Installing Language Kits in OS 9:
<http://www.nisus.com/NisusWriter/Support/Tips/LanguageKitsOS9.php>
Nisus Writer Classic capabilities (Hebrew... applicable to Arabic):
<http://www.nisus.com/NisusWriter/Features/Hebrew.php>

Now, (because this information is still in flux and it has not been
put on our Web site) anyone who wants more information is welcome to
contact me at:

<[email protected]>

and request an email message "NISUS WRITER EXPRESS & Bidirectional
Text" that includes much of the above and a description of the current
(and expected) situation.

`//rite On!
,\\ark Hurvitz
Vice President for Communications
Nisus Software Inc.
<http://www.nisus.com>

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

*BECAUSE THE APPLE OPERATING SYSTEM DOES NOT CURRENTLY (PANTHER)
SUPPORT BIDIRECTIONAL TEXT!*

I know it's a SYstemn issue. It's a bug in the ATSUI APIs.
:-( I had been told they had a workaround for the ATSUI right-to-left
bug in the system... I guess it wasn't true :-\
I had soooo much hope :-(


Corentin

 

[Andreas Prilop]

You mean a regular, non-unicode font can encode all the variations fo
these alphabets with the information for ligature and so forth ?

Yes. Quoting from
<http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/ARABIC.TXT>
"The Mac OS Arabic character set was developed in 1986-1987."
You must distinguish between character encoding (only one code
position required per letter) and glyph set (four glyphs per letter).

I thought it required Unicode :-\ I know there was some support for Arabic
in MacOS 9 (without Unicode fonts)

Arabic System 7.0.1 is still available:

but as far as I heard it was far from perfect

Nobody is perfect, says Osgood Fielding.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Nobody is perfect, says Osgood Fielding.

:-D
Thanks for the info Andreas,
I went to the site you cited and found this:

Arabic support was included, at least partially, in OS X 10.2. It comes
already installed, so you only need to activate it, by going to "System
Preferences : International : Languages" and adding Arabic to the list of
languages. However, 10.2 has not (as far as I can see) added actual script
systems for Arabic or Hebrew, unlike Chinese and Korean. This means that
Arabic support is only through the "universal" character system Unicode, and
only applications that support Unicode directly (not indirectly through a
script system) will be able to access the Arabic fonts. These include Apple's

standard "Text" text editor and some other, I suspect mainly "Cocoa" (OS
X-only) applications, but not most standard applications (those which are
"Carbon", and work under both OS 9 and OS X). The one "general Unicode" font
of the system, Lucida Grande, does include Arabic characters, but it seems
that Carbon applications, including most web browsers, e.g., are not able to
display Arabic text in these, so we will have to focus on Cocoa application
to get full benefit of Arabic. (This is only based on preliminary
observations, I am still working my way through OS X, and welcome any
corrections.)

I guess it explains how the RTL handling in MacOS X is different from what it
was in 9 (and maybe why Unicode seems so important for RTL in MaccOS X).


Corentin

 

[Andreas Prilop]

I went to the site you cited and found this:

Arabic support was included, at least partially, in OS X 10.2.
[...]

Well, Mac OS X 10.2 is obsolete as far as Arabic and Hebrew
are concerned. You should use version 10.3, which has built-in
support for Armenian, Arabic, Hebrew, etc.
<http://www.evertype.com/software/apple/>

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I went to the site you cited and found this:

Arabic support was included, at least partially, in OS X 10.2.
[...]

Well, Mac OS X 10.2 is obsolete as far as Arabic and Hebrew
are concerned. You should use version 10.3, which has built-in
support for Armenian, Arabic, Hebrew, etc.
<http://www.evertype.com/software/apple/>

:-D
Hey... it's not me... I didn't write this, it's the author of the site...
I already run 10.3 )


Corentin