MS Word For iPad: No Support For Arabic Or Indic

My initial tests indicate that the Word for iPad app released today cannot do RTL (like Arabic -- wrong direction and letters not connected) or Indic scripts (like Devanagari -- no conjuncts or vowel reordering).

Like Mac Word, iPad Word can be made to add correct Arabic to an Arabic document created by Windows Word, which may be a useful in some circumstances.

Adding Reference Dictionaries to iOS

I had not thought it possible to add reference dictionaries to iOS, but recently came across this app which is supposed to be able to do it.  I have not tried it myself.

Dictionary Appender

To add .dict files to your device so that Dictionary appender can process them, use file sharing as described here.

Unfortunately this app was removed from the app store for some reason.  If anyone knows how to get it, let me know.

Typing With The International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is not a language but a set of agreed special symbols for describing the pronunciation of any language. Within Unicode they are spread over a number of different blocks, and your OS X should be able to display them with the right fonts. The Wikipedia IPA page is a good way to test your fonts, as the charts there are available both as text and as images.

To input IPA in OS X you need to use the app IPA Palette, the OS X Character Palette, or a special keyboard, such as that created by SIL. Any modern word processor should work.