Office in Hebrew

[Barak]

I live in Israel and use a Mac. Someone told me that Microsoft has
come out with a version of Office for Mac which supports Hebrew. Is
this true? Thanks.

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

Hi Barak

You may want to check out this program: http://www.redlers.com/ It should
support Hebrew, the company is located in Tel Aviv.

/ Fredrik

 

[Gene van Troyer]

You may want to check out this program: http://www.redlers.com/ It should
support Hebrew, the company is located in Tel Aviv.

Mellel supports Hebrew and Arabic to the max. In fact, it was the lack of
decent Semitic language capability in other products that motivated the
Redlers to create Mellel. It also supports Word.doc file format, so you can
exchange files with Word users.

MS Word doesn't support Hebrew or Arabic, beyond allowing their type faces
to display.

Gene van Troyer

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Mellel supports Hebrew and Arabic to the max. In fact, it was the lack of
decent Semitic language capability in other products that motivated the
Redlers to create Mellel. It also supports Word.doc file format, so you can
exchange files with Word users.

MS Word doesn't support Hebrew or Arabic, beyond allowing their type faces
to display.

To the original poster, just to clarify where the rumor he heard probably
came from: Unicode support (which allows the Hebrew letters to display) is a
new feature in Word 2004 that wasn't in Word X, but 2004 still doesn't do
right to left text. You should be able to check out the limitations using
the free Test Drive, which I assume can be downloaded outside the US
(mactopia.com). You can also request complete support for right to left,
though who knows if it will happen:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp
This link (or Send Feedback under Help in an OS X Office program) goes
directly to the Mac developers at MS (the MacBU).

 

[Gene van Troyer]

To the original poster, just to clarify where the rumor he heard probably
came from: Unicode support (which allows the Hebrew letters to display) is a
new feature in Word 2004 that wasn't in Word X, but 2004 still doesn't do
right to left text.

This is correct. Word 2004 will display Arabic and Hebrew fonts, at least in
their basic form. You may run into problems with ligatures and accents.
Also, because Word 2004 does not support RTL, when you paste Hebrew or
Arabic into Word, all of the characters go flush left in reverse order (or
so I read from someone who tried it), as in "Micro Soft" becoming "tfoS
orciM". At least, I *think* that was what the person was suggesting...

Gene van Troyer

 

[John Mooney]

Then where is the point, unless I want to make a list of letters?
Any word on when RTL will be figured out?

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Any word on when RTL will be figured out?

A wild guess: ATSUI will be fixed in TIger adn then MS will be able to
work on implementing it in Word.... It would not be for tomorrow then
:-\

Corentin

 

[Matthew Larson]

Hello All,

I must say that I'm extremely disappointed with my upgrade from Office.x to
Office 2004. I was promised support for Unicode/Arabic fonts, and I guess I
should have been more thorough with my investigation before purchasing the
upgrade.

While it does let you enter unicode text, MS-Word does not render Arabic
fonts properly. I'm not talking about the text direction. I'm talking
about the expected behavior of Arabic script. If you're not familiar, this
is what I mean: Arabic (among some other languages) only exists in scripted
form. In other words, there is no such thing as "printed arabic".
Therefore, as you type letters, they should join themselves together, AND
change form, depending on position, etc.

To see how this should behave, open TextEdit on your Mac, change the
keyboard to Arabic, type a bunch of garbage text. Then, cut & paste that
text into MS-WORD, and you will see a difference.

The good news is that Entourage renders fonts properly. I opened a trouble
ticket with the folks at MS, but I don't have the ticket number handy.
Anyway, I would not expect this to work properly for at least a year,
according to my helpdesk person who answered the phone. One would think
that the same logic used in Entourage could be ported for Word, but who
knows, I'm only a software engineer. ;^)

Later,
Matt

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

While it does let you enter unicode text, MS-Word does not render Arabic
fonts properly. I'm not talking about the text direction. I'm talking
about the expected behavior of Arabic script. If you're not familiar, this
is what I mean: Arabic (among some other languages) only exists in scripted
form. In other words, there is no such thing as "printed arabic".
Therefore, as you type letters, they should join themselves together, AND
change form, depending on position, etc.

That's related... it's the same bug. Office cannot properly create the
ligatures if the direction is not supported :-(

Corentin

 

[Matthew Larson]

.... Yet everything works fine in Entourage (another MS-Office product)
You would think this would be an easy fix, assuming MS's code was modular.
Hmm....

Matt

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Entourage and Word use different text editors. Entourage's is 100%-ATSUI
compliant. Entourage message windows need only display within Entourage
2004. Word's is much, much more complex. Word documents have to appear with
the same line lengths when opened both on Word Mac and Word Windows. There
are also hundreds of things that are configurable in Word. So certain
adjustments cannot be made that will mess up the document when opened
elsewhere.

You'll just have to wait until Apple implements perfect right-to-left
scripts and Microsoft can build on it. Next OS version, next Word version,
hopefully.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.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 Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Matthew Larson]

Paul,

Thanks for your post. That makes sense to me.

I do get discouraged about issues such as these because this is high-hanging
fruit for such a small (scripted characters) market.

If this were an issue with kerning of latin characters, for example, I would
not be concerned because I could rest knowing that many others would fight
the fight when I get too lazy to care anymore.

Is this something that 3rd party developers can create, or must the core
MS-Word product change? I can't distinguish between what's part of the
rendering "engine" vs. what's modular (pluggable) with MS-Word.

Later,
Matt