Word 2004 - Unicode Support

[Jason]

I do work in multiple languages, and having support for Unicode, the
international standard for multiple character sets, is very important
to me.

I have tried typing in two different languages that Word X was unable
to render: Slovak and Arabic.

1. Slovak characters now seems to work in the 2004 version, and are no
longer all rendered as an underscore.
2. Arabic characters also appear, but do not correctly combine
together. Arabic is a cursive script, yet the characters remain in
isolated form.

Could anyone tell me if there is a setting that I am missing? How does
Office 2004 deal with Arabic?

Thanks!

Jason

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

Hi Jason,

I have tried typing in two different languages that Word X was unable
to render: Slovak and Arabic.

1. Slovak characters now seems to work in the 2004 version, and are no
longer all rendered as an underscore.

Could it be a font issue ??? I don't quite see why it wouldn't work.

2. Arabic characters also appear, but do not correctly combine
together. Arabic is a cursive script, yet the characters remain in
isolated form.

The problem here is different. Proper Arabic support requires right to left
support, which Word (and many other apps) don't have yet (because of an issue
in the API provided for the system as far as I've understood it). Without it,
I fear there is no way to get dicent ligature between characters in Arabic
:-\

Could anyone tell me if there is a setting that I am missing? How does
Office 2004 deal with Arabic?

Poorly, until the right to left support can be properly implemented :-\


Corentin