08-05-2005, 07:40 AM
Hi
I don´t khow about Hebrew, but withe Arabic writing systems Tiger has still problems. We are going to prepare a bug report , which we would like to send to Apple. Maybe we start to talk about that before the next major update form Apple comes out. Ahmad prepared allready one Report. Please read that it and add your suggestions to it.
thanks Ali
To Apple:
Dear Sir/Madam
We at Middle Eastern Macintosh User Group (MEMUG) have been following the development of our favorite Mac OSX since it was introduced. Our languages in Middle East are written from right to left like Arabic and Hebrew, Urdu, Persian etc (a so called bidirectional script system). We are particularly interested in the technological aspect of OSX in handling the RTL script system.
OSX
The current status of Mac OSX support for RTL and BiDi is
unsatisfactory with many bugs and shortcoming. We will hereby draw your
attention to the following issues in hope that these will be taken into your consideration and that the proper action will be taken to solve these problem when the new version of OS (Tiger) is released next year.
We want to emphasis that the proper support for BiDi is of decisive importance for marketing of Macintosh products and attracting
new users to the platform in the Middle East, an issue that unfortunately has been neglected by Apple computer in the past. This has led to the MS Windows total dominance in this part of the worlds and thus the Mac marginalization. On the system level the following improvement is necessary to make:
1- "Kashida" is a basic feature of Arabic/Persian computing. This technique makes the proper justification of Arabic/Persian of text block possible to be correctly justified.
"Kashida" implementation makes the words to be "stretched", where ever this is possible, instead of increasing the space between the words.In OS9 4 different degree of "Kashidas" were supported. Mac OSX has gone backward in this respect as "Kashida" in not supported at all.
OsX text engine (Tiger) now support the full justification
of the text. Unfortunately as for Arabic/Persian text this dose not
means that OSX text engine (Tiger) dose it in a right way.What current OSX text engine (Tiger) dose is to insert an empty space between words or characters where it is possible, which is wrong in the case of Arabic/Persian and all similar languages, as you are aware of.
Kashida:
When an application allows you to justify text, you can do so in either of two ways:
* Enlarging spaces between words, when you select No Kashida
* enlarging words using the stretch bar, in conformity with Arabic calligraphy rules
Different type of
* The Single option adds Kashida equally to the appropriate initial and medial characters. Kashida are recommended for initial characters.<
* The Double option adds two Kashida to appropriate initial characters, and one Kashida to medial characters.
* The Triple option adds three Kashida to appropriate initial characters, and one Kashida to medial characters.
* The Large option adds up to ten Kashida to appropriate initial characters, and one Kashida to medial characters.
See the pictures below for example for Kashida support in MacOS 9
![[Image: image003.jpg]](http://www.memug.org/Bugreport_files/image003.jpg)
![[Image: image005.jpg]](http://memug.org/Bugreport_files/image005.jpg)
2- Support for AAT and OpenType technologies in Mac OSX text engine even for Arabic/Persian script. Currently only Roman and Japanese script system is equipped with these technologies, unfortunately Arabic/Persian, Hebrew and Urdu has been ignored.
3- OS9 was delivered with 5 Arabic and 5 Persian high quality fonts (Amir, Kamran, Isfahan, Nadeem etc). It is a pity that those fonts are not included in Mac OSX. We kindly request you to make these fonts Unicode, AAT and OT compatible and deliver them with the "Tiger".
Here are example illustrating the font bugs
![[Image: image007.png]](http://www.memug.org/Bugreport_files/image007.png)
"
4- Adding the "Jalili" calendar (solar Hidjri calendar used by Iranian, Azaris, Kurds, Afghani and Tadjki people) to the new version of OSX.
At the application's
Safari
Safari currently suffers from some bugs when it comes to support for RTL languages.
The Most important are:
Safari currently suffers from some bugs when it comes to support for RTL languages.
Safari can not handle “mirroring” properly when it comes to Arabic/Persian, Urdu etc. All parenthesis ( ), double angle Quotation mark « », curly bracket { }, square bracket [ ], etc are displayed in reveres.
See the picture.
![[Image: image008.png]](http://www.memug.org/Bug20report_files/image008.png)
While Gecko base browser and Opera display the same peace of the text properly: See the picture
![[Image: image009.png]](http://www.memug.org/Bugreport_files/image009.png)
Safari displays the fully justified Arabic/Persian Urdu, etc, justified to the left side of the page. This is wrong, fullyjustified text should be justified FULLY. See the picture
![[Image: image010.png]](http://www.memug.org/Bugreport_files/image010.png)
All Gecko based and Opera
browser displays fully justified Arabic/Persian text correctly.
See the picture
<img src="Bug%20report_files/image011.png"
Still after 5 years, iMovie dose not handle Arabic/Persian at all. All Arabic words are displayed in reverse and Left-to-Right when a text effect is applied to Arabic text. The Only text that can be applied is the "3D
spin" that s all. The rest of text effects disrupt the Arabic words. For example the word
"school" in Arabic is displayed "loohcs". Which is completely wrong.
3D text effect, correct (the only one):
![[Image: image013.jpg]](http://www.memug.org/Bugreport_files/image013.jpg)
All other text effect, disrupted and wrong
![[Image: image015.jpg]](http://www.memug.org/Bugreport_files/image015.jpg)
Pages and Keynote
Neither Pages nor Keynote Support the RTL at all. This is so disappointing and catastrophe for marketing strategy of Apple in the Middle East and else where.
These 2 apps. Dose not support the OSX system level text engine when it comes to RTL.
iPod
We also want to let you know that iPod dose not support neither Arabic based languages nor Hebrew. Concerning huge success of iPod even in the middle east it is very important that ipod supports these languages.
We also would like to offer you our help and would be happy
to come in contact with your department to talk about our ideas and
needs.
I don´t khow about Hebrew, but withe Arabic writing systems Tiger has still problems. We are going to prepare a bug report , which we would like to send to Apple. Maybe we start to talk about that before the next major update form Apple comes out. Ahmad prepared allready one Report. Please read that it and add your suggestions to it.
thanks Ali
To Apple:
Dear Sir/Madam
We at Middle Eastern Macintosh User Group (MEMUG) have been following the development of our favorite Mac OSX since it was introduced. Our languages in Middle East are written from right to left like Arabic and Hebrew, Urdu, Persian etc (a so called bidirectional script system). We are particularly interested in the technological aspect of OSX in handling the RTL script system.
OSX
The current status of Mac OSX support for RTL and BiDi is
unsatisfactory with many bugs and shortcoming. We will hereby draw your
attention to the following issues in hope that these will be taken into your consideration and that the proper action will be taken to solve these problem when the new version of OS (Tiger) is released next year.
We want to emphasis that the proper support for BiDi is of decisive importance for marketing of Macintosh products and attracting
new users to the platform in the Middle East, an issue that unfortunately has been neglected by Apple computer in the past. This has led to the MS Windows total dominance in this part of the worlds and thus the Mac marginalization. On the system level the following improvement is necessary to make:
1- "Kashida" is a basic feature of Arabic/Persian computing. This technique makes the proper justification of Arabic/Persian of text block possible to be correctly justified.
"Kashida" implementation makes the words to be "stretched", where ever this is possible, instead of increasing the space between the words.In OS9 4 different degree of "Kashidas" were supported. Mac OSX has gone backward in this respect as "Kashida" in not supported at all.
OsX text engine (Tiger) now support the full justification
of the text. Unfortunately as for Arabic/Persian text this dose not
means that OSX text engine (Tiger) dose it in a right way.What current OSX text engine (Tiger) dose is to insert an empty space between words or characters where it is possible, which is wrong in the case of Arabic/Persian and all similar languages, as you are aware of.
Kashida:
When an application allows you to justify text, you can do so in either of two ways:
* Enlarging spaces between words, when you select No Kashida
* enlarging words using the stretch bar, in conformity with Arabic calligraphy rules
Different type of
* The Single option adds Kashida equally to the appropriate initial and medial characters. Kashida are recommended for initial characters.<
* The Double option adds two Kashida to appropriate initial characters, and one Kashida to medial characters.
* The Triple option adds three Kashida to appropriate initial characters, and one Kashida to medial characters.
* The Large option adds up to ten Kashida to appropriate initial characters, and one Kashida to medial characters.
See the pictures below for example for Kashida support in MacOS 9
2- Support for AAT and OpenType technologies in Mac OSX text engine even for Arabic/Persian script. Currently only Roman and Japanese script system is equipped with these technologies, unfortunately Arabic/Persian, Hebrew and Urdu has been ignored.
3- OS9 was delivered with 5 Arabic and 5 Persian high quality fonts (Amir, Kamran, Isfahan, Nadeem etc). It is a pity that those fonts are not included in Mac OSX. We kindly request you to make these fonts Unicode, AAT and OT compatible and deliver them with the "Tiger".
Here are example illustrating the font bugs
" 4- Adding the "Jalili" calendar (solar Hidjri calendar used by Iranian, Azaris, Kurds, Afghani and Tadjki people) to the new version of OSX.
At the application's
Safari
Safari currently suffers from some bugs when it comes to support for RTL languages.
The Most important are:
Safari currently suffers from some bugs when it comes to support for RTL languages.
Safari can not handle “mirroring” properly when it comes to Arabic/Persian, Urdu etc. All parenthesis ( ), double angle Quotation mark « », curly bracket { }, square bracket [ ], etc are displayed in reveres.
See the picture.
While Gecko base browser and Opera display the same peace of the text properly: See the picture
Safari displays the fully justified Arabic/Persian Urdu, etc, justified to the left side of the page. This is wrong, fullyjustified text should be justified FULLY. See the picture
All Gecko based and Opera
browser displays fully justified Arabic/Persian text correctly.
See the picture
<img src="Bug%20report_files/image011.png"
Still after 5 years, iMovie dose not handle Arabic/Persian at all. All Arabic words are displayed in reverse and Left-to-Right when a text effect is applied to Arabic text. The Only text that can be applied is the "3D
spin" that s all. The rest of text effects disrupt the Arabic words. For example the word
"school" in Arabic is displayed "loohcs". Which is completely wrong.
3D text effect, correct (the only one):
All other text effect, disrupted and wrong
Pages and Keynote
Neither Pages nor Keynote Support the RTL at all. This is so disappointing and catastrophe for marketing strategy of Apple in the Middle East and else where.
These 2 apps. Dose not support the OSX system level text engine when it comes to RTL.
iPod
We also want to let you know that iPod dose not support neither Arabic based languages nor Hebrew. Concerning huge success of iPod even in the middle east it is very important that ipod supports these languages.
We also would like to offer you our help and would be happy
to come in contact with your department to talk about our ideas and
needs.