Localized Office vX !

[Eisa ALSHAMSI]

Hi All,

I am a new user of mac, but been a long time user of Windows and still. The
reason I am still using Windows based system is, it supporting of Arabic
enabled system which is perfect, but since I am using Mac I want every
necessary application to be available under my finger tips. So, I wonder if
Microsoft is going to give us the chance to use it powerful Office system in
apple environment with other than Latin language, in my case Arabic. I've
heard that there is no plan what's so ever, to do so. Is it correct ?
We have an Arabic enabled office system in Windows OS, and it work perfect.
Do we have other alternatives.

Thanks

Eisa ALSHAMSI

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

Hi All,

Hi Eisa,

I am a new user of mac, but been a long time user of Windows and still. The
reason I am still using Windows based system is, it supporting of Arabic
enabled system which is perfect, but since I am using Mac I want every
necessary application to be available under my finger tips. So, I wonder if
Microsoft is going to give us the chance to use it powerful Office system in
apple environment with other than Latin language, in my case Arabic. I've
heard that there is no plan what's so ever, to do so. Is it correct ?

I very much doubt that! On the other hand, it might be more complicated
that you'd think to implement this function. For many languages all you
have to do is to add Unicode support to have the full extend of requires
characters. This is a lot of work, but still...
For Arabic (and several other languages) you also have to support right
to left writing which is a completely different issue. There are alo
other technical aspects that make it far more complicated to add support
for Arabic (or other languages) to an application.

I'm quite sure MS would be more than happy to support ALL possible
languages :-|

We have an Arabic enabled office system in Windows OS, and it work perfect.
Do we have other alternatives.

Other apps... There are other apps out there that do support unicode and
right to left etc.
Nisus used to be fairly good in this regard in MacOS 9 but as far as
there site mentions, these features are not yet ready in the MacOS X
versions of there products (but they are working on it),

Mellel supports Arabic so in your case, it could be an interresting
option:
http://www.redlers.com/mellel.html

Corentin

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Eisa,

As you probably know, MacOS has recently undergone a series of major changes
as it continues to mature. Also, Microsoft has announced that it will
continue to develop Office for the Macintosh. Both of these facts bode well
for the future of additional language support for Office on the Mac.

This is a good time to send feedback to Microsoft concerning suggestions
about adding additional language support to office because the next version
is being worked on. If there are specific features that you seek in language
support be sure to mention them in your request. The URL to send your
request is <http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp>

There's no way to know which localization features, if any, can be
incorporated into future releases, but you can be sure that your requests
will be read and tracked. Microsoft makes decisions about such things based
on whether or not they feel they can make a profit in a given market. It is
important that you send your request to Microsoft so they have a way to
gauge demand.

In any event, language support is very difficult to implement. Office
applications do a lot more than just display text, so any new support for
languages will take quite a long time to bring to market. Given that Panther
is just a few weeks old my guess is that getting right-to-left language
support will not happen quickly even Microsoft decides to do it.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

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