Farsi Support: Panther vs. Jaguar

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nagha
Posts: 6
Joined: 2003-07-10 21:29:32

Farsi Support: Panther vs. Jaguar

Post by nagha »

Greetings,

I am very interested in knowing whether Panther provides full support for writing in Farsi?

Thanks,
Neema
Renoir
Posts: 22
Joined: 2003-05-26 02:00:10

Re: Farsi Support: Panther vs. Jaguar

Post by Renoir »

nagha wrote:Greetings,

I am very interested in knowing whether Panther provides full support for writing in Farsi?

Thanks,
Neema
The main change planned for Panther that concern you is the addition of the directionality option. This will allow you to "sort of" write from right to left in Farsi. Other major problems with writing are not solved in Panther:

A. The text engine tends to loose its contextuality from time to time. For example, if you switch from English to Farsi from time to time the Farsi will become uncontextual and the initial, medial and final forms will suddenly be replaced by the isolated form of letters.

B. The Unicode implementation in Panther will remain the same. Apple goes "by the book" here. Problem here is that the book simply stinks. That is, the implementation of right to left writing in Unicode is terrible.

C. Support for old fonts, files from OS 7-9, and any backward compatibility: forget about it.

To sum: Panther will offer some improvement and if you need to type the occassional word in Farsi the added directionality option will probably be enough for you. If you have anything more serious in mind, you'd have to use other software.
nagha
Posts: 6
Joined: 2003-07-10 21:29:32

Mellel Supports Arabic/Farsi/Hebrew

Post by nagha »

I find this interesting because under 10.2, I am able to use Mellel and it seems to be working just fine. Including English text in the same paragraph doesn't seem to work very well but for text in one language, it seems to be working just fine.

Has anyone from Nisus contacted Apple regarding this matter?

na

EDIT:

Mellel features support for System 7 fonts.

It seems to me that Nisus is simply not able to provide this functionality and it is not a fault of the OS. If the above statements are true, why is it that other people are able to provide the functionality?

As soon as Mellel adds support for columns, indexing and table of contents, I'm saying goodbye to Nisus and the Classic environment.
Renoir
Posts: 22
Joined: 2003-05-26 02:00:10

Re: Mellel Supports Arabic/Farsi/Hebrew

Post by Renoir »

nagha wrote:I find this interesting because under 10.2, I am able to use Mellel and it seems to be working just fine. Including English text in the same paragraph doesn't seem to work very well but for text in one language, it seems to be working just fine.

Has anyone from Nisus contacted Apple regarding this matter?

na

EDIT:

Mellel features support for System 7 fonts.

It seems to me that Nisus is simply not able to provide this functionality and it is not a fault of the OS. If the above statements are true, why is it that other people are able to provide the functionality?

As soon as Mellel adds support for columns, indexing and table of contents, I'm saying goodbye to Nisus and the Classic environment.
The reason Mellel support those features while Nisus Express don't is simple: Mellel does not rely on the system to provide those services - it uses a text engine of its own.

BTW - Mellel works fine for me for writing mixed direction text. Write to the authors about it if you have problems.
Al-Irani
Posts: 5
Joined: 2003-07-19 13:58:34

Re: Farsi Support: Panther vs. Jaguar

Post by Al-Irani »

Could you please check the following in Panther

1- In the TextEdit included with panther under
Format-->Text--> there is a new command called
"Writing Direction--Right to left (which is absent in
Jaguar) Is this feature a system wide service. For
example if you check in the Mail app do you see the
same command included under the Format-->Text

2- Could you please check whether Apple has included
The "Right to left" or "Arabic" in
the international panel under the "Script" and "Script
behaviours"

3- Is there any mention of a feature called "Keshida"
(the full justification of Arabic paragraph) anywhere?

If not to much of trouble you can check this by copying several paragraph of Persian text (from BBC Persian for example), past it into TextEdit (Panther), select all text, and click the Justify button (or choose Format-->Text-->Justify. Dose the text get Justified on both side or will be left aligned?

As for the contextuality problem, I have seen this even in the different windows of Panther which deals with Arabic/Persian text. Some screen captures which was posted on ThinkSecret show this problem clearly. As Panther is in Preview state yet we hope that this will be solved by Apple when it is released some time in the end of the year.

Thank you very much for your information
Renoir
Posts: 22
Joined: 2003-05-26 02:00:10

Re: Farsi Support: Panther vs. Jaguar

Post by Renoir »

Al-Irani wrote:Could you please check the following in Panther

1- In the TextEdit included with panther under
Format-->Text--> there is a new command called
"Writing Direction--Right to left (which is absent in
Jaguar) Is this feature a system wide service. For
example if you check in the Mail app do you see the
same command included under the Format-->Text

2- Could you please check whether Apple has included
The "Right to left" or "Arabic" in
the international panel under the "Script" and "Script
behaviours"

3- Is there any mention of a feature called "Keshida"
(the full justification of Arabic paragraph) anywhere?

If not to much of trouble you can check this by copying several paragraph of Persian text (from BBC Persian for example), past it into TextEdit (Panther), select all text, and click the Justify button (or choose Format-->Text-->Justify. Dose the text get Justified on both side or will be left aligned?

As for the contextuality problem, I have seen this even in the different windows of Panther which deals with Arabic/Persian text. Some screen captures which was posted on ThinkSecret show this problem clearly. As Panther is in Preview state yet we hope that this will be solved by Apple when it is released some time in the end of the year.

Thank you very much for your information
Answers:
1. The option will be available if Apple or any third party enable it.
2. Forget about it.
3. Forget about it. This will never happen at the system level.

The contextuality problems will not be solved by Apple. The only added feature is the enabling of right-to-left directionality button/option. Mac OS X will continue to "lose" contextuality from time to time or in mixed directionality texts.
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