Typing in Arabic using a MAC OS X

[Naazneen]

Hello!

I just got a Mac Book and although I'm really excited about changing over from a PC to a more advanced and sophisticated operating system, I rely on typing and reading in Arabic fonts for school/work and am worried about my mac operating system supporting that. I was wondering if you knew what supporting software I might need in addition to openoffice in order to be able to type in Arabic in the word processor? I've heard of Mellel, which works well with Macs but in order to send Arabic files they must be converted to pdf which means they won't be able to be manipulated afterwards. So, do I need something in addition to openoffice to facilitate the use of Arabic font or does openoffice provide the capability to do so in the writer? I'm pretty lost on the topic and could use any guidance you all can provide. Though this MAC may be more efficient in some ways its pretty vital for me to be able to integrate Arabic into my word processor in order to function.

Thanks so much! I appreciate your help!

Take care,
Naaz

[TheGurkha]

Hi Naz, I think you'd get more response if you posted this in the Writer forum.

[Villeroy]

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... =50&t=6843 has a link to the site of an author who wrote an Arabic book about OOo and another link to a site about the program itself.

[kabing]

I've heard of Mellel, which works well with Macs but in order to send Arabic files they must be converted to pdf which means they won't be able to be manipulated afterwards

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Does Mellel require coverting the Arabic files to pdf? Or do you need to send them as pdf so others can read them?

Any native word processor on a Mac should be able to create pdfs through the print dialog. I'm not sure if this applies to OpenOffice.org when using the X11 version for Macs, since X11 isn't really a native Mac environment. And I don't know what the current status of the native Mac Beta for OpenOffice.org, so I can't swear it will do this via the print dialog. But you can always export as pdf in any version of OpenOffice.org.

As far as I know, all you should need to type in Arabic on a Mac is a word processing program that will accept Unicode and will handle right-to-left text layout. This rules out Appleworks (no Unicode support) and MS Word (no right-to-left text layout support, at least in the mac version).

OpenOffice.org is able to handle both. The only thing I'm not sure about with the X11 version is whether or not it is compatible with Mac's built-in input menu that lets you specify which keyboard (i.e. character set) you want to use. I would suggest that you experiment a bit. If you have trouble setting the input method in the X11 version of OpenOffice.org, you should try either the beta native Mac version of OpenOffice.org, or NeoOffice. NeoOffice is an independent Mac port/fork of OpenOffice.org.

kabing

[Robert Tucker]

Maybe this link will be useful:

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/inte ... ackey.html

[kabing]

What a great link!

Another good overview site is Tom Gewecke's Multi-lingual Mac--it's mentioned near then end of article referenced by Robert Tucker, although that link sends you directly to the keyboard download page. Mine will take you to his home page. Be sure to check out his blog, as there is a link on the right to a page specifically discussing Arabic.

kabing