Apple has released more info on new features in OS X 10.7 Lion. Of interest related to languages are:
+Voices in 23 languages (compared to 1 in Snow Leopard).
+Safari support for vertical text and Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
+New System Localizations in Arabic, Czech, Turkish, and Hungarian
+iOS-like access to accented characters via a pop-up dialogue when you click on a character
+General support for vertical text in apps other than Safari
+Fonts added for Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Sinhala, Telugu, Ethiopic, Lao, Khmer, and Myanmar, plus color Emoji
+Improved Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese input methods
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6 comments:
Thanks for this post. I am a heavy Hebrew user and I cannot believe how it has been left out of OS X for so long! Hebrew in Office and iWork has been terrible and I have been hoping Lion would bring some good news.
Arabic is supported somewhat, which is good, since it will help pave the way as another right-to-left language.
Do you know the way to contact Apple to appeal for better Hebrew support?
Thanks!
I'm confused about what you are talking about, Ross. Office has nothing to do with Apple -- you need to contact MS about that. No OS can fix the RTL bugs in iWork -- after all, TextEdit doesn't have them. And who really cares that much, you just use Mellel or OpenOffice or Nisus Writer or TextEdit instead.
Are you mainly interested in having the OS localized in Hebrew as well as Arabic?
From some reason Apple constantly ignoring better right to left support, this is the main reason why MS have not implemented it in thier office for mac, MS understands that as long as Apple is not doing any effort to develop and push os x to right to left native languages, their should't invest developing this support in office as the market share of Apple in these countries is small anyway - the change should come from Apple ans not MS, if MS will recognise a move by Apple they'll develope RTL support as well.
Now the question is why Apple is constantly avoide decent core Hebrew suoport in their OS X, i beleive that if it interest MS enough to develope all Windows versions with built in Hebrew support and localized versions it should be in Apple's interest as well, even if not localized version, at lease a decent support in the main English version.
Developing 22 new languages build in voices in Lion and not include Hebrew is poor not to say offensive, although Apple improved RTL support significantly in Leopard, it doesn't look like a real effort is being made - a real shame!!
Your comments about MS strike me as nonsense. MS Word for Mac is the only OS X app in whole universe without Arabic/Hebrew support. Most people think the real reason they don't do it is because it will cost them a fair amount of money and the only effect will be to give OS X the potential to gain a foothold in major markets now dominated by Windows. So it's a loser.
I suggest you provided detailed comments about fixes you want to see in OS X Hebrew support directly to Apple via their feedback page.
Hi Tom.
In your last comment you stte that"MS Word for Mac is the only OS X app in whole universe without Arabic/Hebrew support".
Is it true?
Can you refer me to a word processor and/or elecctronic sheet that works on MAC Lion and fully supports RTL languages, mainly Hebrew and Arabic?
Is such an app capable of importing, reading and editing RTL documents created in MS Office for Windows?
Thnx in advance for your prompt response, for this is my main concern, that prevents me from moving from PC to MAC!
I do not know of a single application other than MS Word for Mac which cannot display Arabic with the letters properly connected. As for whether something created by Windows Office can be read, that depends on what Windows Office has created. if produced by a modern version with Unicode encoding, then OpenOffice or TexEdit or Nisus Writer should be able to handle it.
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