Yes, they make it "more likely". In other words, it may now be "possible".
The reason WinWord has it and Mac Word doesn't, is that Windows has native
support for right-to-left languages. Mac OS didn't have.
I understand that the code to do right-to-left is actually contained within
the Word 2004 source code, it is simply disabled because the OS does not
support it. So yes, there is a possibility that they will turn it back on
for Office "Next".
However, you should be aware that it's still a major effort to get all that
code bedded down and tested on the Mac, even if it does work already in
Windows. So it's by no means certain that RTL will be in the next version:
it all depends on the time and budget available.
You are quite correct: "somebody" knows. But as usual, those who know are
not allowed to tell us, and those who tell us, don't know
Cheers
I wonder if anybody knows whether the enhancements to Unicode in OS
10.4 will make it more likely that we will see Right-to-left capability
(Hebrew and Arabic) in Word for Mac in the next iteration. It seems to
me that this is one of the few areas where Word for Mac is far behind
Word for Windows.
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John McGhie <
[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
