Mac user with pointless Office

[doctoorh]

Hello,
Dear Microsoft developers,
I'm a Mac user, who's new to Mac. And I used to be Windows user as most
of the people. The thing I'm sad about now is the Microsoft Office for
the mac.
As an Arabic user, I can't read nor write in Arabic at Word, or any of
the Microsoft program, which was a huge disappoint for me.
Now though, with the news of the new Microsoft Office for mac, all of
Arab users are waiting and hoping that there will be an Arabic support.
I wish that you give me your response and tell me if there will be an
Arabic support or not? knowing that the Office on windows comes with
full Arabic support, so why not on the mac?

Even the Messenger comes in Windows with supporting for the (right to
left) writing, but not in Mac.

Wait for your answer as soon as possible.
Thank you,
Hayfa

 

[little_creature]

As an Arabic user, I can't read nor write in Arabic at Word, or any of

the Microsoft program, which was a huge disappoint for me.

Hello Hayfa,
I have tried it and I can write Arabic in Office (or at least I hope it
looks like Arabic I have no clue what I have written, but that's another
point )and can do copy and paste between application without problems.
You haven't state which Office do you use. I do Office 2004 on OS X. All I
have to do was to go to system pref. in the international and then enabled
appropriate Arabic keyboard.

Then I can write in all application Arabic. The another thing was that
there's no proofing tool for word, but neither for my native language but I
can buy it as 3rd party addins.

 

[CyberTaz]

I can appreciate your position, but this is not the most likely place for
your voice to be heard. You'll most certainly have more impact if you post
through here;

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=feedback

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

You are right to be unhappy. I'm sorry you were not able to find this
out before switching to the Mac.

No one posting here knows whether MacOffice 2008 will handle Arabic or
not, as CyberTaz said, you should use the Help | Send Feedback link in
Word to send a message to Microsoft.

However, I also suggest that you try out Mellel as an alternative to MS
Word, as Mellel was designed in large part to do word processing in
right-to-left languages. You can download a 30-day demo, and they have a
good support forum to help with Mellel problems.
http://www.mellel.com/

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hello,

Some of the limitation was due to the inability of MacOS to properly deal
with right-to-left languages.

Rumor has it that Leopard is to have better right-to-left support, but
there's been nothing promised about this from Apple or Microsoft. I think
we'll have to simply wait and see.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

Hello Hayfa,
I have tried it and I can write Arabic in Office (or at least I hope it
looks like Arabic I have no clue what I have written, but that's another
point )and can do copy and paste between application without problems.
You haven't state which Office do you use. I do Office 2004 on OS X. All I
have to do was to go to system pref. in the international and then enabled
appropriate Arabic keyboard.

Then I can write in all application Arabic. The another thing was that
there's no proofing tool for word, but neither for my native language but I
can buy it as 3rd party addins.

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

You can insert the "characters" in Office 2004, but you CANNOT write Arabic
because the text runs in the opposite direction

Nobody outside Microsoft yet knows whether Office 2008 will support
right-to-left languages or not.

They were waiting on Mac OS X to support RTL. Rumour has it that OS 10.5
will finally get full support for RTL languages. But whether that support
will arrive in time to be designed into Microsoft Office 2008 is another
question.

Nobody I know is allowed to tell us the answer!

Cheers

Hello Hayfa,
I have tried it and I can write Arabic in Office (or at least I hope it
looks like Arabic I have no clue what I have written, but that's another
point )and can do copy and paste between application without problems.
You haven't state which Office do you use. I do Office 2004 on OS X. All I
have to do was to go to system pref. in the international and then enabled
appropriate Arabic keyboard.

Then I can write in all application Arabic. The another thing was that
there's no proofing tool for word, but neither for my native language but I
can buy it as 3rd party addins.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[little_creature]

You can insert the "characters" in Office 2004, but you CANNOT write Arabic
because the text runs in the opposite direction

I'm stupid, I haven't realize that, they are writing in different direction.
(Just exactly the same like realizing that in some countries they are
driving on the left side)

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi little_creature:

You mean in some countries they drive on the WRONG side?

Cheers

I'm stupid, I haven't realize that, they are writing in different direction.
(Just exactly the same like realizing that in some countries they are
driving on the left side)

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[doctoorh]

little_creature
The thing with Arabic is that the letters are connected to each other,
unlike English for example. And it's written from right to left.
So, whatever you wrote. It can't be Arabic, as I'm sure Arabic is
unavailable choice for Microsoft Word on Mac.
Thank you.
--------

CyberTaz
I didn't know where to post or send my problem. I've tried to send the
same post in the link you gave before I wrote it here though. But I saw
it was useless since they don't really (feed you back) with an answer.
And I needed some answers for my questions.
Thank you for the link.
--------

Daiya Mitchell
What really makes me unhappy is that Word on Windows is so perfect with
Arabic, it even have spelling and grammar corrector.
So, please tell me why not Mac!
About Mellel, I know it supports Arabic well enough. But the problem
is, can I use it for .doc format files?
I work with people who only use Word for writing and receiving files,
and I need the Word to support Arabic so I can do my work easily.
Thank you for your support.
--------

Jim Gordon MVP
I wish what you say is true, Mac is excellent. But we need it to
support more languages.
And yes, as you can see you can't write in Arabic at Word.
Now, I don't want the answer.. I'm just hoping they here us and do
something about it!
Thank you for the information.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

What really makes me unhappy is that Word on Windows is so perfect with
Arabic, it even have spelling and grammar corrector.
So, please tell me why not Mac!

In a few words, Cost and OS Support.

When the current Word was designed, Mac OS X did not have sufficient support
for right-to-left language to enable it. And the cost of building support
for it is prohibitive.

On Windows, RTL is natively supported by the operating system. Applications
simply have to call the built-in functions they need.

Start looking for them to enable that code in Mac Office about two years
after Apple gets it stable. A big product like Office locks off its major
design features about three to four years from on-sale date.

Given how big the "other" changes are on the Apple side: Intel processors,
dual processors, OS 10.5; there may not be the people or money to do RTL
support this time around.

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[doctoorh]

John McGhie,
You made me realize some important information. I guess now I should
but all the hopes on Leopard.
I didn't know that (Right-to-Left) must be one of the OS features. You
mean now when Leopard comes supporting (right-to-left) it'll be easier
to use it in all applications? That will be great if it was true,
depending on Leopard not to disappoint us.

I really want to thank you for being helpful.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Hayfa,

Mellel doesn't use the .doc format as it's default, but it can open
them, and I think can save into it. So you would have to do a little
conversion step on receiving and before sending back, but I think there
are many people using Mellel who need to exchange .doc files with Word
users.
Their feature list says "MS Word import and export"
http://www.mellel.com/mellelfeatures.html
Searching their forum would probably let you know about any possible
glitches, without even posting your own question.

Daiya

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi:

It doesn't *HAVE* to be an OS feature. Mellel built their own

But building this feature is very costly, and if you build one, then the OS
comes out with a better one, you have all the problem and cost of changing
it again.

We need to know that a typical application such as Word spends 80 per cent
of it's computing power and time running parts of or calling parts of the
operating system. Just about anything that appears on the screen, or gets
printed, is generated by the operating system, not the application.

So using a language that runs the other way means changing almost every part
of the application to call different OS routines. It is a massive job.

What I was trying to say is that Microsoft already got burned a few times by
Apple changing the way advertised features of the OS work after they
advertised them. Some of that is inevitable, but we're still feeling the
pain with Word bugs caused because various features of OS X don't now work
the way they were supposed to when Word was designed.

Office 2008 went into design two or three years ago. The major decisions
(such as RTL support) would have been made then, and it's now too late to
change them.

If Apple had published the way their Right to Left support was going to work
by then, and if it now works exactly the way they said it would, and if
Microsoft can find the budget, and time, and people, to do the coding....
Well "IF" all of that comes true, why RTL support would be simple after that


Cheers

John McGhie,
You made me realize some important information. I guess now I should
but all the hopes on Leopard.
I didn't know that (Right-to-Left) must be one of the OS features. You
mean now when Leopard comes supporting (right-to-left) it'll be easier
to use it in all applications? That will be great if it was true,
depending on Leopard not to disappoint us.

I really want to thank you for being helpful.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[doctoorh]

Daiya Mitchell,
Thank you, I've tried Mellel and it's not great with Arabic .doc files,
there something wrong with the arrangement. It happens with TextEdit as
well.
NeoOffice was another option, it works with .doc files but the weird
thing is the file size always comes triple the size of the same file in
Windows Word! For example, one small file on Windows Word is 30KB, the
same file written in NeoOffice in .doc format becomes 100KB!
But thankfully, Nisus Writer Express.app in the other hand works just
fine. With only one problem, that you can't set the text to be in the
right side, although right-to-left works great.


John McGhie,
I understand you now, it doesn't have to be an OS feature, they can add
it but they have to spend more money. And if it was available in the
OS, I mean the right-to-left feature, it will be easier to add the
feature to any application.
Got the idea, thanks a lot.

 

[little_creature]

Having remember which side people drive on in Australia I have to be careful
what to say, haven't I ;-)?
Hmmm....
Hard to say what's wrong. It's not question of wrong/right, it's just
different. We have now finally SNOW and guess you can swim these days. And
Academic question is what's wrong?

 

[Michel Bintener]

Having remember which side people drive on in Australia I have to be careful
what to say, haven't I ;-)?
Hmmm....
Hard to say what's wrong. It's not question of wrong/right, it's just
different.

No, driving on the left side of the road is simply wrong, morally and
otherwise. The memory of sitting on the wrong side of the car, driving on
the wrong side of the road and then driving into a roundabout that goes
clockwise still makes me shiver. Also, driving on the left side of the road
is not really justifiable these days; if I remember correctly, it originated
in the days of yore when there were no motorways and horsemen had to travel
through many a scary wood. They had to be constantly on the lookout for
thieves and thus rode on the left side of the road so that their strong,
right arm could be used in swordfights to drive off their enemies. Doesn't
really happen that often nowadays, does it?

PS: Do not take this post too seriously.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Michel:

in the days of yore when there were no motorways and horsemen had to travel
through many a scary wood. They had to be constantly on the lookout for
thieves and thus rode on the left side of the road so that their strong,
right arm could be used in swordfights to drive off their enemies. Doesn't
really happen that often nowadays, does it?

You've not visited Los Angeles or New York recently, I take it?

PS: Do not take this post too seriously.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Kurt]

Hi Michel:



You've not visited Los Angeles or New York recently, I take it?

Yes, those soccer moms wielding cell phones in 3 ton SUVs can be quite
horrific. That's L.A.