Arabic Proofing Tools in Office 2004 for Mac

[ckrasun]

I am an English student of Arabic, running Office 2004 on a Power PC
G4 Mac.

I want to keep, as far as possible, my machine running in English, but
would like to be able to type in Arabic. However, i have 2 problems:

1. When i set the input language (apple prefs) to Arabic, i get Arabic
script. However, Word does not join the letters up, so it ends up being
a load of rubbish.
-If i change the language to Arabic, too, it doesn't help.
-Arabic doesn't appear to be one of the languages that is actually
supported in Office 2004. Can i get Arabic-language proofing tools for
it?

2.My laptop has a standard QWERty keyboard, so i bought a USB Arabic
keyboard. However, not all of the letters shown on the keys match what
i actually get when i type this in. I imagine that this is due to the
slight differences between a PC and Mac keyboard layout (?). Is there
anything i can do (or must i prise off the keys and replace them in the
appropriate slots?)

Thanks for any help,
Charlie

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

-Arabic doesn't appear to be one of the languages that is actually
supported in Office 2004. Can i get Arabic-language proofing tools for
it?

The problem is that right to left support is not quite there yet... You
definitively need it for proper Arabic support.
There is also not currently any proofing tool available for Arabic.
One option would be to import something like the ASpell dictionaries if
you could find one for Arabic and place all the words in a custom
dictionary. I know several people who use that for other languages.

Corentin

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

The problem is that right to left support is not quite there yet... You
definitively need it for proper Arabic support.
There is also not currently any proofing tool available for Arabic.
One option would be to import something like the ASpell dictionaries if
you could find one for Arabic and place all the words in a custom
dictionary. I know several people who use that for other languages.

addendum:

Mellel is frequently recommended for those asking similar questions.
http://www.mellel.com/

If you search this group, you may find other recommendations.
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word

 

[ckrasun]

thanks, mellel looks like an option, i'll work on that.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

addendum:

Mellel is frequently recommended for those asking similar questions.
http://www.mellel.com

Nisus Writer Express also supports right to left. THey even have a nice
screen shot:
http://www.nisus.com/Express/gallery3.php
Corentin

 

[rebmark]

Here's a bit more information.

******* NISUS WRITER EXPRESS AND BIDIRECTIONAL TEXT *******

Regarding BiDirectional text, we had it on good authority, though
unofficial, that "Panther" Mac OS X 10.3 was to solve *most* of the
problems with BiDi text. We were disappointed with the initial release
of Panther, and hoped for a fix in an update. That was not forthcoming
from Apple. Last year (2005) at Macworld in San Francisco (2005) I was
able to give Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) a five minute test of BiDi text
processing. From this testing and subsequent use, I can confirm that
Apple has increased its support of BiDi text from 95% complete to at
least 99.44% complete. Tiger seems to solve the final problems that OS
X has with BiDirectional text editing and display.

As we state on our Web site, to get full BiDi support, you *MUST* use
Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.x).

In September of 2005 we released Nisus Writer Express 2.5 which works
with Macintosh OS X 10.4 (Tiger) it has the ability to do numbered
lists, and (Unicode) BiDirectional text and has an improved style sheet
navigator in addition to support for "LinkBack"
<http://www.linkbackproject.org/>.

In late January we released version 2.6 which fixed a number of small
bugs and offered a couple of new minor enhancements. (And last week we
released a Universal Binary version that runs on the new Intel
Macintoshes as well as the older PowerPC machines.) I've been
using Nisus Writer Express for my own bidirectional text editing quite
successfully since we released 2.5.

You can download a demo copy here:

< http://www.nisus.com/free/redirect.php?product=NisusWriterExpress >

Version 2 of Nisus Writer Express does not have the Graphics Layer (as
we (at Nisus) know it). This is so often requested by our users that we
are likely to implement it in another upgrade (though it will take some
coding to make sure it works).

We are still working on the Nisus Writer that fulfills *your* needs,
because then, it will fulfill *ours*.

I hope that explains things a bit better. Please let me know if you
have any more questions.

`//rite On!
,\\ark Hurvitz
Vice President for Communications
Nisus Software Inc.
<http://www.nisus.com>

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

As we state on our Web site, to get full BiDi support, you *MUST* use
Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.x).

Yeah, I forgot to mention that :-\

[...]

Version 2 of Nisus Writer Express does not have the Graphics Layer (as
we (at Nisus) know it). This is so often requested by our users that we
are likely to implement it in another upgrade (though it will take some
coding to make sure it works).

Interesting news. Thanks for letting us know,

Corentin