19. Are there Arabic word processors? p3
Description
This article is from the Lebanon FAQ, by Alaa Dakroub dakroub@leb.net with numerous contributions by others.
19. Are there Arabic word processors? p3
Recently Arabic text editors for the Mac have undergone some major upgrades,
here is a critique of threeMac Arabic text editors that have recently
been published. These are: Tex-Edit, MuEdit and Style.
The problem with using Arabic on the Mac is that, while the Arabic system
itself is free and available, you can't use your standard word processor
properly with Arabic, and the Arabic-compatible programs like WinText and
Nisus Int. are expensive and always copy protected. The only alternative
has been to use small and fairly primitive "text editors", program-lets that
allows you to type text, but not very much more; not very useful.
However, recently some new text editors have appeared that makes this
option more attractive. How do they handle Arabic? I have looked at three
of these new text editors, Tex-Edit, mu-Edit (formerly Quill), and Style,
to check how useful they are for the Arabist Mac user. These are some brief
remarks, based mainly on typing, editing and printing a couple of pages in
each.
A general remark first: These are still text editors. That means in
particular that they are limited in size, you can only write up to 32K
(about 10 pages) per document; any they may slow down when you approach
this limit. They do not have things like footnotes, style sheets, and
formatting beyond what is explicitly stated; none of them have rulers. But
they are free.
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