At 08:05 +1000 19.7.07, Jim Watson wrote:
> Dear Knut
>
> I saw your web pages about Mac and Arabic.
>
> There is a new "true OSX" or Aqua version of OpenOffice.org now in testing. It is a Carbon port.
>
> It is difficult to test this because I dont have any experience with this language on Mac.
>
> If you are interested please get the Arabic version and provide a report what happens so it can be fixed.

The main problem now is with display of Arabic script, and directionality of toolboxes and dialogs.

I downloaded the Arabic version, as indicated, but could not install it; probably because I could not read the instruction: Everything that was apparently supposed to be in Arabic was set in an unreadable font (i.e. a font that does not include Arabic characters), and came out as "boxes". All buttons were greyed out, except "Previous" (written in Latin script), which brought me to the Accept screen, but I got no further, probably because I did/could not read that I was supposed to scroll to the bottom to activate the Accept button.

To get further, I downloaded the English GB version, and installed this successfully. Once that was done, I could also open the Arabic version, so I have looked at both.

By and large, Arabic text is not readable in dialog boxes (i.e., appears as "boxes", in a non-Arabic font), although it is readable in the menus and file title line.

In the toolbar, display is inversed from selection; i.e. when you click on the apparent right end of the toolbar, the left end is selected. However, the "tips" follow the actual (clicking) placement of the items, so you can e.g. find the font drop-down menu by dragging across the toolbar until you see "Fonts" as a tooltip, and click there. Names in Style list are unreadable. / This Arabic version only

Some Arabic font names are unreadable, in particular Apple fonts; while the "X Fonts" and others are readable. Both have Latin-script names in Apple-regular font menus, but perhaps one or the other has an Arabic script resource which is chosen, but cannot be displayed, by OpenOffice, or similar. / Both in English and Arabic versions

Typing in Arabic works fine, but here as well, the selection is inversed: To select the leftmost word on the line (the last word) you must click on the rightwards edge. The selection displays what is selected, however. Cursor movement is also correct. / Both in the English and Arabic version

Selecting the Arabic font only works from the toolbar; font selections made in the Character dialogue does not have effect. / Both in the English and Arabic version
(I see that it uses the AAT technology, that is that it cannot utilize OpenType fonts; but that is to be expected, it is Apple standard.)

All this was until I discovered the "Complex Languages" in Preferences. Checking this improved the situation in the English version, but made the Arabic worse. In the English, text selection is now correct, and we of course also get the Text directionality buttons, which work correctly, as far as I have tested. However, font choice in Character still does not stick, but in some cases confuses formatting (in one case forcing a word on the middle of the line onto the next line.

In the Arabic, however, you can no longer select all words by double clicking, in many instances clicking has no effect. This is here also true for Latin text, when you have Complex checked.

Footnotes work as far as I have seen, with the option of having them run from left or from right (in the English. However, when you choose an Arabic font and start typing, only boxes appear: The chosen font turns to Lucida Sans [on my machine]. Selecting the text (Select All works) and re-selecting the Arabic font works. However, the footnote reference remains a box, presumably in Lucida Sans. Perhaps that could be fixed in the Styles box, but since all text there is unreadable (boxes), I was not able to check that. (Inserting the Footnote in the Arabic version involved clicking on the opposite side of the dialog box from where the button actually was. I have, in fact, never seen such a complete mirroring even of layout elements in dialog boxes; but this shows again that this is on an alfa stage).

Of the other things I look at on my comparsion webpage; tabs and indents work fine and reverses as they should (English version tested), unlike many other applications. But switching fonts does not work as well; when you first switch to Arabic it starts typing in Lucidasans again, so you must choose the Arabic font again, and when you try to switch back, it continues to write in the Arabic font, i.e. empty boxes, so you must choose the Latin font again. This is not good, preferably it should remember the font "on the other side", or at the very least switch to a standard font in the other script, so that text is readable without having to choose the font once more.

It is a bit unusual to have the program quit when you click the close box instead of choosing "close", this is Unix behaviour, I guess, but un-Mac-like. I have not tested the other elements yet; but is it at all possible to choose a font for a database form? If not, sorting facilities and such cannot be tested. (Of course, testing it in the Arabic version is difficult, read impossible as we cannot read anything in the dialogs).

This is all from a quick runaround with a single text of mixed Arabic and English; but without access to dialogs it is not much more I can do. On the Mac, the norm is that when a character does not exist in a chosen font, the system displays it in a font that has that character, normally the default font Lucida Grande. Clearly OpenOffice (as well as some other ports from other platforms) does not / is not able to avail itself of this function, which would have made the dialogs readable whatever the font it was set to be displayed in.

The priority, thus seems to be to ascertain that the text in dialogs is displayed in a font containing Arabic; and primarily to fix the selection inversion, definintely in the toolbars and dialog boxes, but also in the text area of the Arabic version.

So far,
Knut S. Viør