Slashdot Mirror
Living In A Microsoft Country (And Speaking The Language)?
WinterKnight asks: "I live in a country that's completely under Microsoft domination. My system, runs a non-Microsoft OS (lets just say its not a UNIX variant, and yes, it's a PC). It's hard. Really hard. Especialy when most e-mail from people arrive as a MS-Word attachments, or they use Excel for making even a silly, simple list of items. Its also hard when 90% of the web sites from that local country are 'designed for IE5+ and above'. What makes it even more difficult is that Netscape has difficulty reading the language, because the format is also IE-only. The country I am refering to is Israel. Microsoft seems to have it locked up here because of Hebrew, which isn't only a diffrent set of fonts, but is also written backwards - from the right to the left. Very few systems other then Windows have support for that. Mine doesn't fully support it as well, either. Living like this is very hard, and I keep asking myself if maybe I should just give up and be 'one of the crowd'?" Localization in Linux is improving, but how close is total Linux support for languages like Japanese and Hebrew that are difficult to fit into your normal, left-to-right, single byte character infrastructure?
"I am well aware that once I do something like this, I'll probably begin to neglect the computer and like it a lot less, because for me it will mean the loss of my freedom. I've never liked Windows, and for a reason. But this freedom keeps costing me a hard price of being 'not compatible' with just about all of the computing resources available. Linux does have programs that can read Word and Excel files, but unfortunately, they can't read Hebrew Word and Excel files. Same goes with the 'IE Hebrew standard' for HTML.
So, here I am, asking the Slashdot community. What can I do?"
Here's a thought.. Mac OS X is a true BSD Unix OS at heart, with the front end uniquely Apple. You can run all of your M$ applications, cause M$ supports the Macintosh platform. In fact, a Mac OS X *NATIVE* release of Office 2001 is scheduled for this Summer. Unicode support in Mac OS X is supposed make it seamless changing from one language to another. Apparently (in reading some Mac digests such as MacAddict.com), it works just like it's supposed to.
:-) It's a fantastic product. I've even gotten it to work from within FreeBSD. :-)
Honestly, I know it doesn't solve all your problems, as you would need to buy new hardware, but it's certainly a consideration. Mac OS X will be officially released on March 24th, 2001, shipping pre-loaded on all Macintosh systems beginning this summer. Until then, you can always try VMWare on your PC.
Chris
ctjewett@zdnetonebox.com
KDE and Konqueror should be able to use these features in Qt without more or less automatically.
It also isn't a market that no one else cares about. His problem is not finding a Hebrew word processor, it is about finding a word processor that can handle m$ formats.
He has alternatives, they're just not to your taste.
Just had to ask....
AC
Yes, this is a monopolistic situation, but as with most Microsoft "monopolies" this is a natural monopoly. Just because someone created something or offers support for something that no one else does =! bad. Windows has more globalization features than Linux. It's just a plain fact. Make Linux more competative in this regard and then complain if MS does something to squash that competition. Until then it's just Microsoft bashing for no reason other than they're Microsoft.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Because we all know that working out new ways to kill people is the hallmark of a first world country.
That's because the text is in English. Here's how I seem to remember Pango working: mirroring is a global option, but text direction is dependant on whatever language is input. So if that had been in Hebrew, it would have been right-to-left, but since it was in English, it used left-to-right display instead. At least, that's how I seem to remember it working. I could be wrong. If so, file a bug :-)
How is this Insightful? Bah. I've lost my faith in Slashdot... :(
No, the analogy is more like this:
You live on one side of this fast flowing river and have to get across it each day to get to work. Everybody else uses an expensive ferry, who happens to have a monopoly in the "getting across the river" market. The price might not seem like much, but when you have to use it twice a day to get to work and back, it adds up. Plus, you've talked to the owner and he seems like an arrogant, unethical bastard. Not many people complain because it's futile and they're used to it. And there's the group-think rationalization of "well, everybody has to pay as well. so that's fair".
What WinterKnight is asking is if anybody knows of any alternatives to the expensive, monopolistic ferry. As it turns out, people are recommending other things like canoes and flying-foxes. A couple of groups are even constructing their own smaller ferries.
Tada! I think that's a much better analogy, don't you?
then why go out to re-invent the wheel, when you already have a low-priced, working solution?
What might that be?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
- Around 60% of people reach the other side
- After paying the modest fee you also must sign a contract agreeing only to use the ferry operator's bus service when you reach the other side, only to eat at restaurants approved by the ferry operator, and only to stay at lodging owned by him
- The ferry owner has been known to take unethical and illegal action in order to keep down competition
- The ferry owner stole his ferry from someone else
I don't know if I'd try to build my own ferry, but I'd think twice about using his.Yes very helpful of the person asking wasn't it? I use some OS, not unix, not windows, but a PC? This guy isn't looking for help, he is trolling.
I don't think you know what trolling means if you think that either the article writer or the person I responded to were trolling. I don't see much of an emotional response anywhere, just the typical knee-jerk "use VMware" which doesn't even fit the criteria of the question.
The article author may not have been very clear, but I seriously doubt it's a troll.
just use vmware or wine or freemware. bleh. thats easy.
Maybe if you're a moron. I don't recall vmware running on anything but Linux or Windows. WINE and Freemware are Linux (and BSD?)-only. This guy specifically said his OS was not-unix and ran on PC architecture. So much for easy.
You can find it here...
--
-Rich (OS/2 Warp 4 and Linux user in Eden Prairie MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
This alone should be enough to switch to non-Microsoft products. The EULA, the attempt to overwhelm and dominate, the dependence of the users on faith, etc, are marks more of a priesthood than a corporation.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
First of all, don't give up. It is true that Microsoft has almost complete domination of Israel due to its complete Hebrew support in its OS, but a lot progress has been made in that area in the Unix world in recent months.
For those of you who didn't know, KDE's Konqueror web browser can display any Hebrew web page, including Microsoft IE's "logical Hebrew". In addition, the QT library on which KDE is based will have full support for displaying and writing RTL Unicode text in its next major release. Check out these two screenshots for an example of these capabilities that are currently in development:
http://trolls.troll.no/~lars/unicode1.png, and
http://trolls.troll.no/~lars/unicode2.png.
After having this version of QT released, a lot of our Hebrew problems will be solved.
For more information on Hebrew in KDE, check out http://www.kde.org/il/.
The asshole Michael Eitan was science minister in the government of the greatest asshole in history, Benjamin Netanyahu. Luckily, in May 17, 1999, the people of Israel have overthrown the opressing leader, and a new science minister, Matan Vilnai, was appointed. So Mr. Eitan isn't science minister for more than a year and a half now, just to put things straight.
Both competing desktops, KDE and Gnome are working on many of the points you make. For starters, QT already has support for hebrew as well as KDE. There Konqueror web browser can display Hebrew without a problem. Gome has some similiar efforts with Pango. Furthermore, for reading Office files: While I find KOffice currently no very usable for editing and working, it has an excellent Word filter that can even do 2000 documents, an Excel filter is in the works. I'm also sure StarOffice can do Word and Excel already. All and all, it's only a matter of time before your problems are solved. In the meantime, it's hard to accept, but there's always a possibility that Windows is your best option.
Hebrew, which isn't only a diffrent set of fonts, but is also written backwards - from the right to the left.
From a historical point of view, it is Greek, Latin and the other Occidental languages which are written backwards.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
By the way, here's a screenshot of Konqueror rendering Arabic, Hebrew and Yiddish.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Let me create a bogus example. Say I have a skin problem that requires I protect myself from unfiltered sun light. One manufacturer in the world make a car that has (patented) filtered windows. Naturally, this is the only car for me. End of story.
Now if this car also has poor quality, a dinky fuel tank, flat tires that you are by law not allow to replace, 180 degrees of wheel play and an AM radio with no antenna.
Sucks, huh?
Ofcourse, MS does not own the rights to Hebrew on computers (atleast I hope not) but with the lead they have in Israel and their tendancy to try to be incompatible with the rest of the world (it's what the customers want. Right?,) it is unlikely that an alternative will ever be practical.
Just to say it out right, to some of us, Windows, Office, etc. are that car. We hate how bad it is, being forced to use it, and knowing that by submitting and using it we are making it even less likely that there will ever be a better alternative down the road.
This lead that MS has, the natural monopoly you mentioned, irks some of us because there is good reason to believe that it was achieved through the use of unethical practices. Some folks hate rewarding such behavior.
Dan
is the ferry operator shooting anyone else trying to start a ferry and random passengers? if so (and it must be for the analogy to match), then i'd build the bridge - out of site from the ferry operator.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
If you're willing to use Linux and a 2.2.x kernel, and you have a copy of Win95/98SE lying around, you can use Win4Lin (www.netraverse.com). Cheaper than the "lite" version of VMWare, and works like a charm for the occasional Word/Excel/Bloatware task.
If you decide you want it & can't procure a copy, I'll gladly help out by legal means.
Hope this helps,
.sig a .sog, .sig out loud, .sig out .strog"
".sig,
".sig,
I am an English speaker, and thus don't know a whole lot about the ins and outs of many of the world's languages, let alone ones that are written from right to left. But I have been watching the efforts of the Pango project, which seems to be helping bring more exotic character sets to Gtk. It isn't done yet, but seems to have made great progress thus far. Perhaps you just need to hold out a little longer and things will sway in your direction...
Posted from the wireless couch.
I've had this screenshot lying around for a while. Since the article talks about right-to-left languages, I thought I'd link it here. Right-to-left Slashdot.
How very, very cool, Cabbey. Sorta fills one with hope: at least one megacompany *gets it*.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Oh, go on. It was hyperbole: obviously, *SOME* OS and apps companies have supported non-English languages.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
We use VMware all over the place here at my workplace, where we have a large number of Unix geeks who need to be able to use Word and Excel and such (and where Star Office sometimes doesn't get the job done, unfortunately). Inside VMware, you're running a real, honest-to-goodness Windows box. You can even have it setup to do networking (I setup my linux workstation to do IP Masquerading for it). It's a heckuva lot more painless than dual booting, and you still get to run your favorite OS.
You could also try Wine perhaps, which I hear supports running Office 2000 applications now.
I agree. I recently went through the same issues and found it better to just switch back to MS for the time being. I've been using Linux at home exclusivly for two years (was hobbiest user for two years prior) but found it easier to switch to Windows 2k than to find a way to get what I wanted out of Linux (easy, universal USB support, better PDA support, etc). Maybe I could get it to work with Linux, but why bother? I didn't feel like doing the kernel recompile dance (plus modules, plus new libraries for additional software). When it better supports the functions I need out of the box, I'll switch back. I'm not tied to one OS or another, just to the functionality it offers.
Chris
You could run those as your host system and run a Windows machine inside with plex86 (www.plex86.org) which is free and open source. Or you could go with VMWare which is a bit more developed. Or you could check our WINE which is doing pretty well with Windows applications these days.
Of course, those require x86 hardware underneath and Linux or *BSD. It would have helped if you had given a bit more information about your complete configuration. You probably aren't running Mac since you could just buy MS-Office apps.
Apple has been on of the best at supporting multiple languages over the years. In public beta for Mac OS X, if someone sent me a email in Chinese. Mail.app (Mac OS X's built in mail reader) would display those languages in Chinese charachters. I also saw this with Russian, and Japanese. What was really cool was when I initially opened the app. And it gave me a listing. The from field would display the charachters in natively. Not jarbled, and unlike windows. No language pack's to install.
Cheers,
Tomas
===========
MOVE TO USA! SPEAK AMERICAN! USE LINUX! EVERY USA WEBPAGE WORKS IN NETSCAPZE OR MOZILLA!!!! or just put your monitor up to a mirror to fix the right to left text thing
You mean: "Since I don't know what OS it could be, it does not exist"? There are several for the PC architecture, such as OS/2, GEOS, CP/M-86, CCP/M, ...
It seems you are the trolling one.
OS/2 is a PC OS and it runs Netscape Communicator 4.61
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
I wonder what that place would be.
...
Not the US, by any chance ?
I'm sorry, but I don't expect anything good from Mr Bush
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
VMware never supported OS/2 - presumably the OS the poster is running - as a host OS.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
It all depends on the details ;-)
b'hatzlecha means "Good Luck," or "With Luck".
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
lol, easier to get ISRAEL to change their language? Heh...you'd have a bunch of right-wing orthodox with machineguns knocking at your door.
note that I'm Jewish and lived in Israel for a time, so I'm allowed to make this kind of joke.
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
ask a real Israeli what they think of the religious right in their country
You mean the religious right that helped carry Sharon to a landslide victory over an impotent Barak? What are you crying about?
Cheers,
I live in a country that may have completely lost hope for peace. My son runs around with children of a different race (lets just say they're not Jewish, and yes, we are). It's hard. Really hard. Especialy when food supplies run low, or a sniper picks off a friend you've known for many years. Its also hard when 90% of the people surrounding this country are 'determined to drive us into the sea'. What makes it even more difficult is that we share many of the same holy lands. The country I am refering to is Israel. Hope for peace seems to have vanished here because of deep-seated hatred and changes in leadership. This is very hard, and I keep asking myself if maybe I should just give up and be 'put in my place'?"
I am well aware that once I do something like this, I'll probably begin to lose respect for myself and my heritage, because for me it will mean the loss of my freedom. I've never liked having to avoid standing next to windows, and for a reason. But this freedom keeps costing me a hard price of being 'in mortal danger'.
So, here I am, asking the Slashdot community. What can I do?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Is there some other definition of variant I wasn't aware of? Got links?
That's what I was trying to figure out ... Be *is* a unix varient (a single user varient, but still)
I'm guessing OS/2 or something real obscure (no clues? sniffle)
Isn't this the essence of a Monopoly situation?
I don't know if you intended to condemn Microsoft for being in a monopoly position in this instance, but if you did, that would be absurd.
In this case, Microsoft appears to be the only one providing a workable answer. They deserve credit for this, not scorn.
What Unicode has to do with fonts? You still need Hebrew glyphs. Unicode is about data representation. Fortunatelly, decent fonts are not hard to get.
No, it's Qt 2, which does represent it's strings internally in Unicode. But without Right-to-Left rendering, nor input. (wait for Qt 3)
Dang, thought I got around it. I stand corrected. I'll have to find something else people find offensive now :-)
Ah, nearly right. Godwin's law only applies when someone/thing is compared to the nazis/hitler. I'm comparing (Resistance against Nazism stands to Nazism) to (Resistance to giving in to the microsoft monopoly stands to the microsoft monopoly).
Actually yes, Its called postscript.
Ah, so he'll just tell everyone he works with to save their docs in PS format?
This constant ignorance on your part is kind of silly.
no sillier than your inability to recognize when a personal crusade on your part infringes on the productivity of you and those around you.
BSOD? hehe, no problem, xscreensaver has it.
Ah, you can recognize humor, at least.
I can do anything on this laptop you can do on a M$ machine
Okay, I'm calling your bluff...
Let's see you generate a BSOD. (ob. humor)
Let's see you do what the orignal poster asked for: run fully localized for the Hebrew language, or even open a word file from the Hebrew version. (ob. on topic)
Computers are a tool. OS's are a tool. Applications are a tool. Use the best tools for your job. This constant bitching about where your tools come from is kind of silly.
They even have an Xfree86 port coming along nicely.
what you want to do / what is convenient
IS WRONG
because it's easier to do with a MS product. I say if Windows does what you need use it for now, and if you have the time and the energy try out some of these new (KDE2/Konqueror/etc..) Linux projects and switch over when they do what you need without too many hoops to jump through.
Not everyone has the time, or the lack of other interests, to hang around user groups and spend hours or days configuring their software when there is a choice that just works.
You should be gut shot and left for dead.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Try using VMware under Linux (or whatever you use) and run Windows as a virtual machine. Our shop is all Linux with the evil M$ stuff running as virtual. We're under the gun to convert to Linux completely before the next round of M$ OS'es come out. The rationale for that is that we will agree to a 'like a book' license, but will not agree to having a $500 Office package on each of 50 machines when it only gets used rarely.
All of our app tools are Linux, its just that some folks we work with don't understand that DOC format is not needed for communication.
As I bask in the bliss of invulnerability to email viruses and such, I also have the woes as discussed in this article. I get by pretty well with pine's interface to a word viewer, and fortunately all of the clients who send us print layouts in excel (it sounds funny, but it sucks) are dealt with by our graphics guys. But it would be so much nicer if developers could adhere to standards and not just give in all the time.
A small example, I had to spend an hour explaining how bad of an idea it would be to allow email from nonexistant domains in order for someone else's automated mailbot to get email to us. Fortunately we got the developer to comply. I can't imagine how often these situations are put on others where it's easier to just give in and make your product crappier so that it works with what most everyone else is using.
I have to agree with sporkboy on this one. I don't have the time to monkey with file conversion when I have to get the job done. If you use the best tools for the job, then you are encouraging free competition. If you think those tools should be available on Linux, then get thee to a text editor and compiler.
I spent a month at my company's development shop in Israel. Our product's first GUI was written for X Windows. Later, the Windows version was released with more functionality. Even the Unix zealots there have a second Windows PC hooked up to a KVM switch. Deal with it.
Because those are the rules for bidi languages... the text is right to left, numerics are left to right.
Foreign words (in non bidi languages) also go right to left.
To make life even more fun, the glyph for various Arabic letters changes depending on what letters are next to them.
The joys of internationalization.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
i'm not familiar with basque; where is it spoken?
another way to look at the previous post:
sure you dont have a need for a version of any os in your native language, but consider the people from your country that are expirencing your problem now (or in the future).
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
back on topic. two problems with win4lin:
1) it required you to use their kernel.
2) screen refreshing was pretty poor. example: when you switch from one virt. desktop to another and the back again the win4lin screen was blank. it would only refresh if i selected something that caused an action. so if i clicked on the start menu it would refresh the portion of the screen with the start menu.
the second one could be my setup, but the first kinda sucks. i will give win4lin the speed thing though. it was spankin' fast.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
"PS: I know this will get mod'ed down as it's Pro-Microsoft, but before you pull the trigger, re-read the post. He has NO alternatives."
Most pro microsoft posts are modded up to +5 on slashdot (just like yours). The best way to karma whore on slashdot is to say something nice about Microsoft or windows 2000.
Slashdot has been turned into MSDOT. Of course I'll be modded down for stating this simple, obvious and easily verifiable fact but what the hey.
War is necrophilia.
Mac OS X (though not released yet) should support most languages I think.
Of course Office for the Mac, may not be able to take advantage of this until it is ported to OS X sometime in the fall.
>get a Mac,
Good suggestion, but I think the person was complaining about using any MS product at all.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I also used to work at an office like that. After some time, I just got fed up with it, resigned, and a couple of days later had a new job at a very Linux friendly company. It even payed more than my previous one.
However, unfortunately, this guy's problem is much more serious. He's stuck in an entire country which pushes Micro$oft on him. Sure, he could always move, H1-B's are not that hard to get. However, changing country is much more difficult than just changing jobs. It means leaving friends, family, you'd might have to sell your house, you might have to face discrimation abroad etc. Too much sacrifices for just an OS...
Directly, not a lot. But if you get a unicode font, then it will contain the glyphs for Hebrew.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Opera has limited support for Hebrew in the Windows version (due to the internal support of Windows), and no support (or very limited) in the Linux version.
Why the hell don't you just say what you're running?
=1000101
Please send me a sample of an xls file with hebrew in it and I'll ensure that we can read it. Rendering should also work with appropriate fonts. Editing cell content will not work until pango.
Hi, I'm a maintainer and lead developer of the wvWare project and the AbiWord project (www.wvware.com and www.abisource.com).
wvWare is a project that reads DOC files and turns them into other more useful things. It is also a library that other applications can build upon. This is what AbiWord does.
Currently, neither project supports BiDi *output*. I am rewriting wvWare to properly support Bidi in at least HTML output. This will be done within a week or so. There is a patch to the Abi tree to support BiDi that I personally will be committing this weekend.
So it doesn't (or at least won't) be that much of a deal that person XXX runs Linux or BSD or whatever and I'm hoping to prove that GPL'd applications can be just as good as their commercial equivalents. This is what AbiWord and Gnumeric strive for, as do their KDE counterparts which are also excellent products. You will be suprised in the quality and feature-set of the upcoming Abi 0.9.0 release...
Dom
Are you sure the same people are saying both views that you hear? Did you check their User Infos or something? This could just be another instance of the "Everyone on Slashdot must think alike" fallacy. The two views you mention, I believe, are more likely to be held by different Slashdotters.
At least you didn't use the word "hypocrisy" and misspell it.
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I also live in Israel. I am writing this from my home computer, which is 100% pure GNU/Linux (slack). At work I am the only guy who uses Linux on his desktop (and there are hundreds of programmers working there). At work I have a dual boot system (and to be honest I have access to another box next to me which runs NT, but is doesn't support hebrew. I use it to compile my sources on windoze. - I edit them with vim of course). I have the same problem with reading all that crap mails and documents in hebrew. As a programmer I get relatively few of those but still it is a hassle. msword attachements are sometimes in english, in which case I sometimes take the effort to read them. (using 'strings', or openoffice). if it is hebrew I usually ignore them. I know it isn't a solution, but I lived with it for over two years now. If it is important I can either ask someone else who got the same mail, or boot into NT, (or send a mad reply, but I don't do that often). :).
I feel very strong against giving up and going back to the windows way of life. not only because I strongly dislike windows as it is, but mainly because this is exactly the battlefield where M$ is trying to win souls, and using windows would feel like giving in to them, and letting them rule my life. I use Linux because I dont want to be governed by M$. Therefore I feel it is not *me* who is incompatible, but it is all the other guys
My usual stance is - who needs hebrew? all interesting stuff in computing is in english anyway.
On a more realistic level - I sometimes look for solutions, and I found a few lightpoints:
browsing: mozilla has hebrew support
mail: Xfree86 has by default a hebrew font (try xterm -fn heb8x13) This is useful for all text oriented mail clients.
all those gui apps such as gnumeric, openoffice, etc: I dont have hebrew in those, but I know there are some 'solutions' as well, I read about a modified widgets that supports hebrew fonts *and* bidirectional writing, and can be used with gnome. look at www.linux.org.il for more link about hebrew.
Union Way does this http://www.unionway.com
I use this at work on an NT box I'm forced to use
for my Chinese, Japanese and Korean needs.
I think it's actually the other way round. Actually you're quite right. They're arabic. In the middle ages, they were surpassing europe in almost every scientific field. Hence, europe imported most of their knowledge. Among these imports were 10 numerical letters. European numerics look something like this: MCMI Salve
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
uhh here maybe
damn, you're helpful.
if you don't actually have any constructive advice to pass along, you could just shut the fuck up. do you know for a fact that no open source developers are working on solving this problem?
this is the real-life equivalent of the old joke: "Doctor, it hurts when I turn my head this way!" "Well, don't turn your head that way!"
on a positive note to the author of the original question: have you investigated Apple's WorldScript technology and their associated Hebrew Language Kit? as i don't know any Hebrew, i'm not sure to what extent that might meet your needs - i know that there are a fair number of MacOS apps written to take advantage of WorldScript.
more relevantly, when MacOS X ships in March, you will have a good chance of being able to use many of the open source apps you currently use on a Mac. consider AppleWorks 6 (or whatever the latest version is by then) as a replacement for the Microsoft Office suite. use PowerMail or Eudora as an Outlook replacement, etc. etc.
-steve
--- "We also were guided by the unlikelihood that anyone would face supernatural evil armed only with technology."
Nice screenshots, especially the mirrored one at the bottom, but look again and you will see that the labels are NOT mirrored. So in hebrew, the translator has to type all words backwards...
and if you're so concerned about having readability in hebrew but don't want to use Microsoft, why not go halfway and buy a macintosh? with the language packs, it can do native hebrew, as well as chinese, japanese, etc.
atleast then you can use IE 5+ sites, open Excel and Word documents, and still not be a microsoft slave.
notice the hebrew support at the bottom
Here's an interesting catch-22. The instructions for installing Thai over linux at linux.thai.net are in Thai. So, in order to install Thai, you have to have Thai to read Thai to know how to install Thai. Silly, but not too bad.
.rpms I got from that site totally messed up my redhat (at that time, pinstripe 6.9.5) system to the point that it could not boot. Running (happily) on RH 7.0 now I haven't dared try again... (yet). Yeah, my fault for trying it out on a beta. Anyone know if they work on 7.0?
What *is* bad is the fact that the
On whether it is difficult or not. Yes it is. Many of my friends need a dictionary to decypher my email, and I have to boot into windows to decypher theirs. But can I live with it? Yes, but many others I know could not.
Karma makes sense. It makes a lot more sense if you add reincarnation.
Arrange content as a bitmap of sorts. Let it be written backwards, forwards, up/down, diagonally.
I don't envy users of other languages though. Must be insane to do innovative advertising and layout.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Microsoft's Mac products are nowhere near as "bad" as they are on Windows. They are generally very "Mac-friendly" (i.e. they follow design and usage guidelines that Mac user like) and superior to the competition.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
hmm, i just want to know what non-unix variant OS he is using that runs netscape... that would be none on the pc...
You know good and well he meant english.
Not to mention that when using the English language, the word "america" primarily means the United States of America. Yes, even when it's not a U.S. citizen, they usually mean the U.S. It can also stand for "The Americas" of which Latin America is part of which also stands for South America and North America (again, Latin America). Look in an english dictionary and most time the United States will be listed there, followed by a note about "The Americas".
By the way you also forgot to mention French as one of the language.
I've never used the feature myself, but I know that VIM has support for right-left languages. Get VIM and type ":help hebrew" to get instructions on how to get Hebrew support. Recompiling many be required. Many distros (e.g. RH and SuSE) don't compile in many features that a minority of users would want. I had to add "--enable-multibyte" for Japanese support.
Re:Yep (Score:1) by Spock the Vulcan on Wed Feb 07, '01 11:21 AM BST (#386) (User #196989 Info) 1. Help is comming, ....
2. Your English looks good.
Can't say the same about your English :-)
Actually 'comming' is the Aramaic word for 'Help' though of course not with that exact spelling.. jut phonetically.
--
Azrael - The Angel of Death
posted with: Mozilla (0.7)
Re:Yep (Score:1) ....
:-)
by Spock the Vulcan on Wed Feb 07, '01 11:21 AM BST (#386)
(User #196989 Info)
1. Help is comming,
2. Your English looks good.
Can't say the same about your English
Actually 'comming' is the Aramaic word for 'Help' though of course not with that exact spelling.. jut phonetically.
(damn the closeness between the submit and preview buttons)
--
Azrael - The Angel of Death
posted with: Mozilla (0.7)
--
Mozilla's getting better in its support for Semitic languages and other r-t-l scripts. I follow the BiDi development a little, because I have an interest in using Hebrew online. This isn't a perfect all-encompassing solution for you, but at least you should be able to surf the .il web by Mozilla 1.0.
Tangentially, support for Hebrew on the Mac is getting better also, from what I hear. Which is good, because the Mac is in a similar (extreme minority) position in Israel. I wonder how OS X is going to affect this.
Constitutionally Correct
I've actively tried to de-microsoftize our documentation at the place where I work. The first thing I did when I was hired was get rid of all those lousy excel and word files, and converted them all to HTML (making them available on our intranet web as a side benefit). I've also slowly but surely been able to convince (some) of my coworkers to exchange documents in open and well documented formats. And now, there are at least 5 of us who have snuck linux onto our work machines.
Blender And Linux Fan
Australia is looking nice...
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Why don't you want to go back?
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Ah, important also. Mind if I take your place in austrailia for a year or so?
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
and if you live in a third-world country, as this person must
Israel is by no means a third world country! In fact, Istraeli companies do a lot of defense research and development- much of which the U.S. uses.
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
LOL, documentation? You mean "domination," I'd assume.
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
so :P you big meanie.
Dos 6.22 was woefully lacking in basque support ;)
Here's the problem,
No OS'es in my language.
No way to learn about computers
Therefore, I have to learn another language to understand the computers.
At this point, I am fluent so it is meaningless. Not to mention that I live in USia now as well. I was just pointing out that he is lucky to have any tools at all, and should work with what he has instead of sitting around and whining about it.
If he wants to develop better tools, then more power to him, but otherwise he needs to come to terms.
Speaking as a Jew (which I am) I was quite impressed with how high-tech Israel is when i visited last summer. However, what they REALLY need for a OS... Wait for it... JEWNIX! :-D
(I couldnt resist, and it's not a troll. I'm Jewish)
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
anyway, I run a win98 on my desktop, and a Debian linux on the firewall. I use a telnet client for DOS with multiple terminals (Alt F1 - Alt F10; really cool), and I use SMB to mount the filesystems. I use bash to manipulate the windows files.
And I Xhost a lot of programs on windows, like netscape and licq, to keep the windows CPU clear. Crashes less often.
Anyway, the guy seems to be avoiding windows just out of spite, so I guess it's ok to suggest anything.
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
By resisting, maybe for some bitter against MS when Win95 crashed on your 2 years ago. Or maybe because like so many others you've been caught up this wave of OpenSource(tm), Information wants to be free(tm) fanaticism your only stifling your own productivity, just get stuff done. that is your job, not to be a preacher for a cause on a website you continually goto while at work. (probably on your precise Linux(tm) box.
Hey, I run a FreeBSD machine at home, duel boot Linux etc.. But at work I use Outlook, Word VC++ on Win2k. My office does not run Linux friendly environment. My machine never crashes (and when I say never I mean once a week). My email always goes through, and I have a great webbrowser IE5.5. I have no complaints, does anyone really hate windows for the product? Even if you have to run a Win9x, it's not like your installing new drivers everyday, and sure it'll crash, big deal, you reboot the machine. I'll guarantee you that you'll still be more productive then on a Linux machine; where instead of rebooting your tweaking
Finally you'll go back anyway, Windows IS the best GroupWare product, you'll get frustrated with your Linux world, when you find yourself behind in deadlines, or not even know about them because you couldn't read the MS Word document they we're printed on, and like I said, resistance is futile..
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
Now I wonder if he's going to kill me for revealing that.. :)
-- The ballad of arrivederci
Sanity is not statistical.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'll bite. It's an opinion, but an uniformed and ignorant one. Suggesting that the quality of information would be lower because it's in a different language is so stupid I shouldn't even comment :-/ You make people with English as a first language look really, really bad.
-
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Unless the documentation lies, Vim has right-to-left text entry and hebrew font display, no?
Why not choose the OS that best fits your needs? why be so pig headed about using your "alternate" OS. If you want to play with it go ahead and do that, but if you want to get your work done why not pick an OS that can do it, such as Windows X, or a unix variant?
If you feel like moving, I have a spare bedroom....
He means US English. Is it that hard to understand what people are talking about if everything isn't stated 100% explicitly correct? Or are you just looking for a chance to get mad at an American?
Well, he could do what we Merkins do and insist everyone use English. Then he has lots of choices. Probably easier to get the country to change its language than break the MSFT stranglehold anyway. (tounge in cheek! tounge in cheeck! I'm Going Down!! ABORT! ABORT!)
Thank you Little Bill. Now I've seen the light. All this time I thought Microsoft wanted my money and my freedom. Now I see that they want to cooperate with me. Bullshit. The path of least resistance leads to slavery. When Big Bill makes you his bitch, don't come crying to me for a blowjob.
But in My country, They support Microsoft Without proper reason©
But Anyway the rebellion exist : © May be i'm part of it© Tengku Azman is the Leader of Advocating Opensource© Maybe I'm the leader of advocating Bahasa Melayu UI starting at Mozilla project a©k©a Projek Meksom© hmmm©©©©© There are 'My-Linux' and My-Opensource too©
My Country is Malaysia ¥©my
Anyway, i found similarity between Mahathir And Barak, Both Pro Microsoft©
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
hmm, can't say I'm a big mac user but there are quite a few in my office. Office I wouldn't know about - but the slow rendering of pages on IE for mac is enough that alone it would be enough reason not to touch mac.
Of course, enything that doesnt run IE @ all is out of contention for me, as I kinda like a logical DOM and events system for DHTML.
Dont know about you, but everything else sux ass.
First, every OS that supports ANSI 1252 (99.9% of them) supports Basque.
Second, there are localized versions of Win9X in Basque. That means that all the UI is in Basque, Euskara, Euskera or whatever you want to call it depending on your political color. As far as I know there's going to be a Basque version of Whistler too.
Apple has a Hebrew Language Kit. It's not perfect, and the list of compatible software is pretty weak, but it's better than nothing. I believe this is a standard feature of OS9 & up, though I'm not sure how things are going to be for OSX.
Info can be found at http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n568 66
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
When you need to deal with busness stuff, go to your M$ Office. When you need to do anything taht doesn't require M$, switch abck to Linux.
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Yes, this is a monopolistic situation, but as with most Microsoft "monopolies" this is a natural monopoly.
You're partly right. Yes, this is a monopoly. Yes, this is a natural monopoly — Microsoft did something no one else does, and there's nothing wrong with that. I object, though, that you said this is as with most Microsoft "monopolies" a natural monopoly. The courts have ruled that Microsoft has abused their monopoly in the past with anti-competitive practices. They don't appear to be doing so in this case (at least I have no evidence of it) but they certainly have in other areas. Don't forget that.
I don't know about Cliff, but people in Israel send me email and Word docs in Hebrew because Hebrew is their preferred language, not mine. Most of the sites I visit are in English, too. But once in a while I need to find something at an Israeli site that doesn't have everything translated into English. I am even involved in this. I am helping an org I belong to put content on its site, and sometimes this content arrives in Hebrew. In Word, of course. At least I translate it into pages that both Netscape and IE can read. What that's about is that there are two ways to put Hebrew on the web. Visual Hebrew requires that text be broken up into lines, and displays them exactly as they are in the HTML. Simple, easy on the browser, supported on Netscape, but if the lines are too wide or narrow for your window, too bad. Then there's logical Hebrew. When you type Hebrew the cursor moves R2L, but if you type a number, or latin chars, the cursor moves L2R. Logical Hebrew has the chars in the order you type them. The plus is that paragraphs can be line-broken depending on the width of the window, the minus is that BiDi support in Netscape/Mozilla isn't done yet. I already use IE for most of my browsing (because Netscape 4 loses bookmarks made during the current session if it crashes, IE doesn't). Until Mozilla BiDi works, I won't be able to use it. Why don't I contribute? I worked on BiDi code in a Hebrew word processor (Dagesh, sadly, M$ Word whomped it), and rather than learning something useful that I could contribute to Mozilla, I came away realizing that I don't understand logical order, in fact one of the things I liked about Dagesh was that sometimes it's hard to type just what you want in logical Hebrew, when that happened, I could get it to use visual.
Although many people speak more than one language, they generally prefer to conduct business in their native one. Besides, what do you mean by a language called "american"? Latin America is part of America too so I guess you mean spanish or portuguese.
VM Ware all the way baby. Run your M$ OS within your real OS. Never surrender. Mimic the ways of your enemy to gain his confidence, and then destroy him.
I gotta say I use VMWare running a MS OS just for web browsing and those darm attachments in propietary formats.
It works really well and you can suspend the OS when it's not in use. It's a lot slicker than dual boot by a long shot.
There are some cultural issues. Some people don't know why it's a good idea to send files in email in a non-propietary format. I send them a few files they don't know how to open and they usually get the hint. Send them postscript when you are feeling kind and nroff when you feel cranky.
timbu
It boils down to what you NEED. Computers are nothing more than tools that do a job. If you current computer does everything that you bought it for, then use it. If it doesn't, maybe you should use a different OS until your current OS supports the features that fit YOUR NEEDS. Personally, I've been using Macs since about 92. I have NEVER thought to myself, "Crap, I need to use Windows to do this" MacOS fits my needs. It may or may not fit yours.
;-) Personally, Mac OS 7.6.1 and ClarisWorks 2.0 are all I've ever really needed to do what I need to to with a computer. I'd like a dual G4 running OS X in a dual boot with its own 9.0.4 for Classic and 9.1 on the OS 9 partition, but I don't need that much power to do word processing or the simple graphics I need to do. WinXX is not enough of the right kinds of functionality to be a serious system for me, and too much of the stuff I don't want to be worth hassling with .. there are a few ham radio apps like DigiPan that won't run on a Mac, but I'm not heartbroken that I can't use them ..
Same here, though I've been using Macs since 83, and have used every model and OS version since System 1.0 on a 128K Classic.
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
he's not running linux he says 'I use some OS, not unix, not windows, but a PC'
Fix it.
First: find like minded people, which I'm sure there are all around you. second: plan of attack. research how this can be done, there are probably a couple of way to approack this. third: relize this maybe very time consuming and difficult, but there are people around the world that will give you advice and direction. forth: create a time line and stick to it as best you can. be aggressive but realistic. This is not about using a computer, but about freedom. striving for freedom is always Hard, but rewriting certian parts of an OS is not as hard as being shot at.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When you couple it with the new XRender extensions it makes lovely looking text. Also, some examples using Pango have surfaced with not only the text in reverse, but also the button arrangment. Picture here!"
Buttons are to the right of a list, not the left like we are used to. Similarly with a spin control even.
You can read more about Pango here including seeing a picture of
-- Dave
VMWare is only available for Windows NT (and 2K) and Linux. This guy isn't running those operating systems, so VMWare is not an alternative.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Perhaps this is your calling...
Start the ground work (or join the pango project, etc.)
You might be suprised how far a little help/sweat goes...
The Other Nate
Use Konqueror. Full support for right-to-left languages, including Hebrew. Plus it is the best browser for Linux anyway. A (somewhat old) screenshot.
Even worst, some clueness government officials are just too blind to "endorse" and "enforce" the use of Windows + ie. I'll take two examples to illustrate how the government "endorses" Windows too heavily.. 1. In government's new service, it officials support Windows (Mac, Linux? sorry), support both Netscape and IE (but wait, they have a page saying that what Netscape can't do and IE can do, so you know what thay want). They even have a page to check your OS/browser, saying "not supported" for everything else... At the end, the project is just a typical PKI stuffs, of course most modern OS and browsers can do it. 2. Letting MS stuffs flooded into primary school's computer textbooks like Word, Excel, IE, Windows 98... for most people/kids, they just relucant to learn anything else outside the official textbook and exam. syallbus. 3. As the result of 2, newer webpages created by those kids are never know that they need to support anything outside IE 5. Having a e-mail suggestion to the site operator, and guess what I received? He tell me why not to follow the "software advances"... even with the "noise" created from GNU/Open source/Linux and such, what I'm feeling is increasing locked-in...
See
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/ 01/February/0300.html
Martin Sevior
My system, runs a non-Microsoft OS (lets just say its not a UNIX variant, and yes, it's a PC).
Why not just say what you're running?
Everyone here seems to have read it the way I did the first time to mean "I am running Linux"
But on closer inspection you are not::So what are you running?
---
This
That is one of the grooviest links that I've seen in a while. Mil gracias!
Anyway, the point is that of course using Windows is the obvious choice.
Then again, some people realize that a lack of choice is dangerous. From my personal experience with employers and from reading industry news and watching marketing drivel and nonsense hype, I personally (and I know many others feel the same) don't trust ANY large companies to have much power.
I saw another post on KDE and Pango. If it's not good enough, how will it get the best improvement if no one even tries to use it? A system needs users and people who care to get going.
Especially ground-up movements like open source and free software. The only reason Linux is as good as it is, is because people at the bottom cared until it got better, more money, and so on.
I don't want to sound to cliche but free software has a lot of analogies with traditional political revolutions. The difference is that it's safer, so it takes less commitment. Still, as with any revolution, the people on the bottom have to go to extra effort now to achieve a better future tomorrow. (Not to say that all political revolutions achieve such ends.)
Think about tomorrow instead of just today. Stop being lazy and the "I'll use Microsoft because it's easier" attitude if you want to have a better technological climate in the future.
Technology influences society more and more, and letting one company run everything is a very dangerous predicament to be in. So be willing to sacrifice and try to change something, even by just being one more person who doesn't give in to all of Microsoft's whims.
(Also, I'm a free market advocate, but the real world will not always produce the ideal conditions that simple economic models predict.)
- Tom
- Tom
"O, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be."
Yes multiboot is the answer, becuase shutting down your machine and rebooting just to read emails is the most efficient way to get work done. Sarcasm.
You don't have to associate electronically with anybody from your own country. The world wide web is just that, world wide, so you can come read our english made-for-any-browser pages and exchange email with ppl in Europe and if anybody needs to send you something in Hebrew you can have them mail it to you. I'm assuming you guys still have a post system over there? Or they can call you on the phone. By separating your real-life associations from your virtual associations you can go farther than you would otherwise. Online you don't live anywhere but are simply a citizen of the net.
Or you could just get Windows. If you really need it. Don't let me stop you.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I hate to be the bearer of bad news my friend, but the landscape of the world is changing. The world is becoming one of have's vs have nots. You need to decide where you want to be. If you can't beat em, join em. At least temorarily until you find a better solution.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I also live in Israel, and I would like to address some earlier comments:
First of all, KDE's support for Hebrew exists (which is generally good), but is schematic at most. Fonts suck (probably since they're raster), and BIDI display algorythms suck big time (they reverse digits in numbers etc.). Pango is under extremely heavy development, and will not be available until Gnome 2.X (by which time the Mashiah (Messia) will probably come).
Mozilla supports Visual Hebrew under Windows, and Logical Hebrew under Linux. The other options just don't work - so pick one.
There's NO WORD PROCESSOR. That's right, KOffice is miles away from doing any I18N (as opposed to L10N which AFAIK no one needs). OpenOffice is under development, but no BIDI plans are available. There are also some CLI attempts like giving Hebrew support to Emacs (Mule) or VIM (integrated into the source tree). However, Hebrew is not present at CLI either.
Regarding Microsoft's support of Hebrew, I can say that it is TOTAL. They've got all their products tuned for Hebrew, and even the Win32 API's got special fields for BIDI layouts.
I don't need anything from Windows, but for the Hebrew support. If I were able to write documents in Linux, I won't be needing Win2K (BTW, NT generally supports Hebrew better than 9X/ME).I call upon all code-writers for common GUI interfaces (GTK, KDE, wxWindows and others), to devote some thought for design and implementation of BIDI algorythms and fonts. It will not only cater to Israel, but for Arabic as well.
I would also like to express my thanks to all of you who do care for Hebrew support . Just hang on and complete it - when it's there, it won't need any more housekeeping, and one more country will be able to enjoy UNIX.Toda lahem anashim, atem hachi tovim.
It's great people put the time into making legacy code in obsolete languages like Fortran, Basic and Hebrew run on modern systems. Or is it? Is the coming total breakdown in Israel and Palestine due to the legacy code each insists on running in their heads, and running their societies on? Despite the great faults remaining in English-languaged territories, ever since the North won the war for civility we've gotten along pretty well within the cohort. The evidence from the field would seem to be that English-coded cultural wares just run better, with fewer crashes and breakdowns (tho some excuse must be made for North Ireland to carry this argument)?
Is _your_ language Y2k ready? Or would you rather be speaking in tongues? Babel was not an advance. You can write good code in a bad language; but it's _much_ harder.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I gotta remember to turn off the +1 bonus. *mutters about high karma being a pain in the ass*.
Sure thing. Go, take my place, and pay the taxes I owe, and build my credit up =) *grin*
---
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
I might be wrong, but I think Solaris for Intel has good multilingual support and I believe StarOffice might be able to open multi-lingual Office docs. I know for a fact that it'll handle Excel spreadsheets really well. Its worth looking into.
This is one thing that always irritates me on /. You have a bunch of people saying that you should just choose the product that works best, regardless of who makes it. Then you have a bunch of people saying that if you don't like the way a certain corporation does business, don't buy their products. These two views are mutually exclusive, yet I hear them both uttered by the same people fairly often.
I think this may be an oversimplification. For one thing, why are those two views mutually exclusive? Doesn't the way a corporation does business affect whether or not the product will work best for me? (i.e. in a year, I'll have to upgrade because everybody else did and they're all using a new file format which isn't supported by my "old" software.)
Also, you realize that people may believe both of those things but prioritize them differently depending on the situation. Are you sure people aren't saying something more like "Use what works best as long as it's not from a company which I don't like", or "You may not agree with me about not liking this or that company, so you might as well use whatever works best for you." Note that in some cases, part of the complexity of the situation may be implied rather than stated outright. When dealing with a computer newbie, for example, people might just say "Use what's best for you" while not worrying about the whole "Don't buy from this or that company" thing. This has nothing to do with people going back on their beliefs. They're just trying to help someone who has limited experience by giving simple advice, so as not to be too confusing. They don't actually bother to say "You're new, so I'll spare you my anti-whoever diatribe."
You need to sit down and figure out what that hunk of circuits means to you and what you want to use it for. Is it just a matter of being productive? Then you should probably start using Windows. If it means more to you than that (as it does to most Slashdotters), weigh the tradeoffs. I guess this brings up a question to the Linux development community: What foreign languages are supported with the distributions out there, and what are in the works?
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
KDE has a translation team for basque, here is
their web page:
http://kde.eu.euskal-linux.org/
Being not a Basque speaker, I don't know how
far they are in there efforts, but you might want
to check it out. Or help out, if you like, I'm
sure they'd be glad to have someone who has good
English.
There is also a KDE hebrew team, btw:
http://www.kde.org/il/hebrew
--
Garett
Well, these days even being a loyal MS customer will free you from MS documentation. Yes, I meant "domination"...
sulli
RTFJ.
1. Help is comming, ....
:-)
2. Your English looks good.
Can't say the same about your English
Hold on a minute, you're bitching because your OS lacks a critical feature (the easy ability to view and edit Hebrew language files). A feature which another OS (Windows) supports very well. Then you make it out to be the fault of Microsoft beacuse your favorite little OS can't handle your native language. Look, if your OS can't handle Hebrew and you need one that can but are unwilling to switch, then yes, life will be very hard for you, and this little anti-Micrsoft whine on Slashdot will not help your predicament. You complain about losing your freedom by switching to Windows, even though it sounds like you have less freedom with your current OS, namely the freedom to do the job your employer is paying you to do.
I've seen a lot of posts in the past on Slashdot that say use the right tool for the right job. Well, it looks like at the moment, judging from your post, that a Microsoft OS is the right tool for this aspect of your job. Especially since your talking about your work computer and not your home computer. You are curectly being paid by someone else to work in an office with others (I assume), therefore you and your software need to be able to interract with the people and the data files they create. You just need to suck it up and deal with something bad to fulfill your job duties or get another job.
I can't believe this got on the front page. The question of i18n on other OS's is a good one, but wrapping it up in this anti-Microsoft flaimbait really takes away from the point, unless getting a bunch of sympathy from the Microsoft haters on Slashdot was the point here.
Hold on a minute, you're bitching because your OS lacks a critical feature (the easy ability to view and edit Hebrew language files). A feature which another OS (Windows) supports very well. Then you make it out to be the fault of Microsoft beacuse your favorite little OS can't handle your native language. Look, if your OS can't handle Hebrew and you need one that can but are unwilling to switch, then yes, life will be very hard for you, and this little anti-Micrsoft whine on Slashdot will not help your predicament. You complain about losing your freedom by switching to Windows, even though it sounds like you have less freedom with your current OS, namely the freedom to do the job your employer is paying you to do.
I've seen a lot of posts in the past on Slashdot that say use the right tool for the right job. Well, it looks like at the moment, judging from your post, that a Microsoft OS is the right tool for this aspect of your job. Especially since your talking about your work computer and not your home computer. You are curectly being paid by someone else to work in an office with others (I assume), therefore you and your software need to be able to interract with the people and the data files they create. You just need to suck it up and deal with something bad to fulfill your job duties or get another job.
I can't believe this got on the front page. The question of i18n on other OS's is a good one, but wrapping it up in this anti-Microsoft flaimbait really takes away from the point, unless getting a bunch of sympathy from the Microsoft haters on Slashdot was the point here.
do like the Israelites do.
Seriously though, you are asking what you can do? Go to two machines, or a dual boot. If you come across something that can't be done with your OS of choice, boot into Windows and do it. It is as simple as that.
Israely piracy is one of the true plagues of Israel. U.S reports show that there is a 70% of pirated software in the buisness market, and almost 85% in the private sector.
People feel that they'll only buy games they:
A. Really like and
B. Haven't got warez'ed beforehand.
Thus, even those who do buy games, have a mixed collection of pirated software and non-pirated one.
Me? I just learned to live without being able to type or read hebrew in 99% of the applications. And since I only need it for E-mail and Web, and I use Kmail and Konqueror respectively, It's really not that of a big deal.
-Nimster
-Nimster
-Nimster
Your Ad Here.
Sorry dude, QNX is a UNIX variant.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Others have been helpful. I'm just curious: which OS are you running, and are you embarassed about it or what? You can tell me -- I promise I won't laugh or call you names or anything. :)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Mac OS has better multi-language support than Windows (built in control-key use of non-english characters), and the Mac-only application Nisus Writer is widely regarded as being the best multilingual word processor.
But why dual-boot Mac OS X and Linux PPC when OS X will be able to run almost any Unix application on its BSD core?
You need a lot of memeory, but not a (vast) amount of anything else. At my company I work (as in MS VC++, and occasionally Word + Excel) with a VMWare simulated NT machine (128MB RAM) on a Linux P3-400 with 368MB RAM. I get along fine with it.
I read somewhere that the VMWare machine only runs 10% slower than a real one (this could be a load of marketing crap because I haven't put an identical NT machine alongside to compare). The networking is speedy, and the disk access (I use a disk file [so I can make backups!]) is adequate.
Steve.
BTW - I do have a need for Linux, I'm not just running it for the 'ooooh, Linux' factor (although I admit, once you switch from fullscreen VMWare back to X, people do tend to be impressed - you just don't tell them that there is a Windows version)
"Well Pat, I work for a major international marketing firm, and yes, my computer, a PC, has an OS on it."
See what I mean? But you're not on a game show, and you can tell us. I think you wrote this just looking for pity. Well, that's found in the dictionary between "shit" and "syphalus"... no wait, that's "sympathy":)
Ok, rant over, just wanted to post.
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
It is the US. Mr Bush cannot make a difference. Mr Sharon can, and will :-(
5. Find a better place to live. I'm sorry, but I don't expect anything good from Mr. Sharon.
I think it's actually the other way round. We (European languages) write letters from left to right and numbers from right to left.
Numbers 'look' to the other side. It's more natural to write from the least significant digit to the most, which is right to left. In spreadsheets, numbers are usually right aligned, and so on.Just look at this:
I believe in using the right tool for the right job. This is just a personal choice but I am curious as to why one wouldn't use the tool that is obviously more suited for the job?
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
One alternative to VMWARE is Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com). It is cheaper and faster than VMWare, but it does have two major disadvantages. No DirectX and currently the only networking supported is TCP/IP. But if all you want to do is run Windoze applications it totally blows VMWare away. There's even a trick to be able to talk to Exchange servers, but it's a pain.
http://james.nontrivial.org
It supports Hebrew
My other sig is extremely clever...
I hereby invoke Godwin's Law. Not that there's any reason to continue down this path anyway....
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Godwin's Law prov.
;-)
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
From here.
Thanks for proving the law and its associated codicil, even if this isn't usenet!
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
The problem is more serious than just Hebrew. The stranglehold that MS has on the Israeli computer scene is such that, in the words of an acquaintance of mine, not only a typical Israeli doesn't know what Linux (BSD, Mac, insert your favourite) is, he/she does not know what Windows is. A typical Israeli has a notion of "computer", which includes a certain look-and-feel of the desktop and applications that "everybody" uses.
This penetrates all the way through the professional circles, to the point where development for UNIX platforms is done on NT, with subsequent porting, where a unixoid like myself (using UNIX/Linux at work, as well as at home) has to be watchful and make special efforts to maintain smooth interoperability with co-workers. And we do not use Hebrew for anything that is crucial to our work. Microsoft's lack of portability is bad enough without the right-to-left and Hebrew-related problems.
Getting word docs as email attachments is bad enough. The doc might be in English, but if the template is in any way unusual, e.g. intended for Hebrew Office, then StarOffice may barf. Getting Windows shortcuts is also bearable - view them as text, and the path to the file is somewhere there,
so you can get to the file with samba or something like this (whether you will be able to read it is a different question).
Bigger problems occur when you need to create something that your colleagues are likely to use. What do you write your documentation with if the only thing people around you can handle is Word.
What if you need to write something highly technical with a lot of math? I am still to see a tool that would handle it as well as TeX/LateX. I can create Postscript, PDF, or HTML out of it, but others who only handle Word won't be able to modify the document.
What do you do when someone complains to you that a few lines you send in an email are much less convenient to him than an Excel attachment because it is easier for him to work with Excel while creating a MS Project Gantt chart? Tell him to bug off because less work for him means much more work for you? Not exactly a solution, since you are the exception rather than the rule. What about meeting notifications of Outlook Exchange? I fetchmail my mail from the Exchange server, so I do get the invitation, but is there a way to "accept" it that Outlook will understand?
Personally, I think that people should work in portable formats and environments, and use tools that are most suitable for the task at hand. I don't see a big problem with requiring that people learn new tools as needed. However, I cannot so easily dismiss the issues of co-operation with people who are convinced that whatever they use is fully portable, because it's the biggest game in town.
Then, use Win4Lin, from Netraverse .
It's lighter and I've seen it run on a K6/2-400 with 64MB of RAM. This is not a fancy machine, but it was able to boot Win98, start MS-Power Point and give a presentation at our LUG meeting point.
They use some kind of modules to give a protected-thread access to the CPU. This is way it runs so fast in slower machines. Also it's not as memory-hungry as vmware.
I was trully impressed.
If only it was easier to install, at least in my Mandrake...
Regards,
opkool
OK, I'll bite (byte?). Why, in the middle of all that right-to-left stuff in the screenshot, is the date rendered as "1997" instead of "7991"? Seems like this sort of inconsistency would make dealing with these languages even harder.
And if Micro$quish is so good at doing right-to-left, why haven't they released Visual APL????
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
Isreal is one of the most important nations on our planet. That country's people have always been and continue to be at the center of political and religeous arguments and beliefs which deeply impact the rest of the world. They strugle daily with other cultures who would have them eliminated altogether, given half the chance. Their web sites and PCs are attacked by enemies (and real enemies, night like your flame-war opponents here on /., or that neighbor with the barking dog) at every given moment.
Why in the hell would they be running MS anything???
Is this the REAL reason certain Isreali software companies have the source to Windows? To seal it up for MS perhaps?
(I appologize for lack of links... just speaking of the top of my head; but most of this has been discussed here before)
"I've seen plays that were more exciting than this.
Honest to god... Plays!" Homer Simpson
I know that Solaris comes with about five billion different languages straight out of the box. It actually even does a good job of supporting them too. Not sure about StarOffice, but I believe it has proper support. That just leaves the web browser. Try Sun's modified version of Netscape. If that doesn't work, send a change request to the Mozilla project.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Yeah, I know exactly where this guy is coming from. I recently went on a trip to Israel and I noticed that their technological infrastructure was far superior to that of the United States. Their phone cords resemble category 5 cables. I asked if they had a network, but they dialed up just the same. Everything from the pay phones to the atm machines was superior to the United States version in one way or another. But it is true, just about every computer in Israel has Microsoft Windows with Hebrew Language support. However I have Red Hat Linux, and it has hebrew support. You use international keyboard and language in KDE to change the settings. I don't see how web pages can be IE only. I see just about every web page I ever wanted to visit perfectly in Mozilla. But I relate very much to having to deal with Excel and Word Files. I use Star Office and all my friends have Microsoft Office. They wont listen to me when I tell them it is a bloated piece of crummy software. Star Office isn't perfect, but it is legally free (they have appz office) and it works. They send me things to look at in excel or word files that I have trouble reading correctly. How come we have a universal graphics format (gif and jpg), universal video formats (mpeg, avi) but no universal word processor formats. rtf and txt are ok, but they don't remember tab settings, paragraph indents other page formatting stuff, or weird text colors. We need a universal office file format. Let's call it .off Every spreadsheet, database, text document, etc. could be saved as a .off and the only difference between word processors would be their features and not the popularity of their file formats. How did I change topics like that? Dang.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
For many languages the mutt mail reader handles the character sets well, assuming you have the fonts installed and are using either xterm or kterm (as appropriate).
If you want to edit Japanese, try jvim -- it handles left-to-right or right-to-left entry.
As regards Japanese can anyone get mutt to decode charset="ISO-2022-JP" automatically without changing the pager from the default internal pager to be "less -r"?
Scroogle
Hi. I'm also living in a 'Microsoft Country' as you call it. Yes, in Israel.
I don't agree with you at all. First, there is a great progress all the time, especially since last year - Have you seen pango ? (http://www.pango.org) ? Have you heard about qt3? In some months gtk & qt will support hebrew just like Windoze does, that means that it'll be much easier for programmers to make their X programs support hebrew, japanese, etc.
This is a GREAT progress, if you think about the fact that you can count on one hand the kind Israelis who are involved with localization and making linux work better with hebrew.
I think that everyone that thinks that linux needs improvements with hebrew/other language support, shouldn't just say 'I can't use linux' or 'I can use Linux but it's really really hard for me!', but to try and contribute, for making his and other's life easier. That's what the open source is made for: If you find a bug in an application instead of stopping to use this applicaion you'll either try to fix the bug by yourself or at least notify the author!
Stop running your non-unix and switch to one of those "unix variants". Wine should shut you up just fine. :)
i can't remember chinese, but japanese write up to down and right to left. what would be nice for me is multilanguage packs so i can have my english os AND have some funky japanese capabnilities built in at an os level so i can use it with any app... i remember a few years back i found a chinese/japanese/korean text inputer for windows that could insert cjk characters into any windows apps(well just about)... it was nice... wish i didn't lose it .(
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
i've also had problems getting system commander working on an asus a7v mobo... it seems to think the promise ata100 controler is a virus (or atleast that's what the cryptic error message leads me to believe
just in case anyone else might want to try this
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
i was looking at dataports recently.. the dpi is like ~$50 for the kit and maybe another $35 for an additional drawer, plus ~$100 for another hard drive so you could pull this off for less than $200... it's not free or dirt cheap, but hardly bank breaking for a middle income person in an industrial nation (of course i have no idea the income of the author)
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
I have the upmost respect for those who have
deicated thier free time to supporting GNU
software, but I hope this sort of post rings
the bell.
While Linux and other GNU projects have provided
viable alternatives to running a host of
applications and services there is still a lot
of gaps to be filled in.
I don't want to discourage anyone who advocates Linux of free software in general. Just keep in mind that Linux still needs to grow.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Be, Inc. just announced CJK character set in only 1 meg of flash ram via Bitstream. This of course includes right to left functionality, if I'm not mistaken. Hebrew is just a character set away (and a lot smaller in file size). This is the sort of thing that will be crucial in the IA market, so you Linux boys had better get on it. You don't have a good old Poppa JLG to buy you the pricey solutions...
Linux needs solutions that avoid duplication of effort, I think.
Get my free Hitchhiker's Guide Tribute Novella:
eat my karma
Well I guess you are SOL.
If everyone uses Windows in Israel then I guess you are stuck with the same. Keep (Linux, BeOS, whatever) there as well but when it comes to email and stuff you are gonna have to use Windows for now. Not that it is a horrible thing. Windows has many added bonuses that Linux lacks, or whatever OS you happen to tend to lean to.
~AdmrlNxn
~Admrlnxn
"I got your mom in my trunk"
Fortunately the majority of the younger people in Arab countries are beginning to move away from Windows, and begin using Linux. Here are some pages related to the subject:
b ic -howto.html
Arabic Howto for Linux:
http://members.tripod.com/Adeveloper/ahowto/ara
Arazilla, the Arabized version of Mozilla for Linux. The same site also has some information about Hebrew if I remember correctly:
http://www.langbox.com/AraZilla/
Linux4Arabs, a page about Linux in Arabic:
http://www.linux4arab.com/
Saudi Linux User Group:
http://www.linux.org.sa/
Arabized Xterm and some Islamic software for Linux:
http://www.linux.org.sa/arabicsw/right.html
There's also an Egroup list for Saudi users of Linux.
Foriegn countries in particular have a reaosn not to be using closed source operating systems, where companies very likely can put backdoors in that jeopardize national security; China seems to have figured that out already.
I used to be a big fan of Be, and actually bought r4.5.2 and r5 as opposed to warezing it. I even have the BeOS Bible, but anyway . . .
One thing you could do to get Arabic, and I assume Hebrew fonts working in Be was so just import the fonts from Windows. Be could display them, but couldn't display them right to left, or even connect them properly. I remember asking some guys who progammed for Be about extended language support, and they essentially said for some reason right now Be couldn't support any language that went from right to left, due to limitations in the OS itself.
Regardless of language limitations, Be was a really great thing; unfortunately the company didn't give a damn about it. For a desktop OS, it was excellent. I wish Be hadn't abandoned it, then I'd have a reason to put it back on my system.
Geez, what's the matter with you ranting guys!?
He also said he is using a PC!!
So why don't you go and flame the people telling him to buy a whole new computer instead of just installing a new OS.
G-d forgive me my shouting, but that just makes me angry!
>Face facts: Microsoft has chosen to fully support the Hebrew language. Other OS and applications companies have not. Microsoft wins this round, fair and square
Ahrgh! I cannot believe this gets modded up to 5:insightful.
You'd better face the facts and read some prior postings before repeating plainly wrong statements.
Need I say KDE2?
Judging by the tone of your post, it would seem your reluctance to use Windows is based on the simple fact that it's a Microsoft product.
Ahh yes, the "Evil empire" who's hell-bent on taking away your rights. *sarcasm*
Man, get off your high horse. Refusing to use an OS just because it's Microsoft's makes you no different than the Windows "sheep" who's crowd you don't want to be a part of.
"The good thing about Alzheimer's is that you can hide your own Easter eggs."
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
I can understand bashing Microsoft because of their business practices, bug-laden software etc., but not because the OS you prefer doesn't support Hebrew as well as Windows does. Use whatever software works best for your situation, and quit whining.
As far as Word e-mail, I hardly ever get that. The few times I do, I use Antiword, which indeed doesn't work with Hebrew documents. The one time I got a Hebrew document by mail, I asked the sender to resend it as text, which she did. However, I just looked at the source code for Antiword and I changed one line to make it display Hebrew docs. It's a bit of a hassle: Extract doc from mail, run thru Antiword, then open in vim to reverse text direction.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is a) I don't get these problems on a regular basis, b) it's a hassle in any case, and c) quick-and-dirty hacks on these things aren't that big a deal in some cases. If you're using open-source programs, dig in and see what they do. Character translation is a procedure. RTL is slightly harder, but for short runs I've been known to just "siht ekil dear" for a bit.
By the way, you said you're not using a Unix variant, and then you mentioned Linux. What is it, then?
Responding to a muppet, the shame! Native English speakers account for about 325m people. That's a lot of people who don't speak it. Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) - approx 1.2 billion. Various (alright, about 5000) Hindi dialects - approx 1.1 billion. Hell, French speakers account for about 130m. Ok, so English is usually the second or third language for an awful lot of people, but have a bit of respect. I could also note that a lot of ethnic minorities in Britain speak better English than people born here. I am sure that people in other countries (.us .ca .au etc etc) may agree with me.
It wouldn't surprise me if in 100 years we are speaking a variant of Chinese. Doesn't phase me, kids learn fast, I might have a couple one day.
That's all.
BWS
the wonder of open-source is that if you dont like something, you fix it! try that! go onto sourceforge.net and start up a group for making all your hebrew needs on your OS a reality! then everyone else in your situation gets together and you get all the hebrew support you need.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
So much for the high tech image of Israel. I always thought it was BS.
I've heard he's the "anti-christ" that the Bible talks about! =) something about world domination...? hehe
MacOS 9 already supports Hebrew.
Even better, MacOS X will support it as well, and has simply astounding support for internationalization.
I am a fairly new programmer, but I have written a few small freeware utilities in OS X using the Cocoa/NextStep frameworks. One thing that I quickly discovered is that the OS has the absolute best support for non-english languages that I have seen or heard of anywhere. Anyone who wants to try to top this is going to have more than a little difficulty at it.
First, for my utility, someone offered to translate it into german for me. It was incredibly easy to internationalize, and the APIs were excellent. When I ship an updated version in about a week and a half, it should support English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. There will not be seperate downloads, but one single self-contained bundle (folder of resources and executables appearing to the user to be a single application icon). It will even load different UI windows to better support differences in language layouts (right to left, left to right, etc)
When the user of any language opens my app, the OS will determine if his language is supported, and if not, choose the best substitute (the user can set the substitute order).
A single OS X install supports many languages, and unlike the Classic MacOS or windows, does not require a special language installation. The language used is determined on a user by user basis, so one person can log in as english, and another person can sit down right afterwards, and log in using Japanese. Very Very cool. During the process of testing my apps, I even had some applications open in my native english, and some opened in German at the same time. Logging out not necessary (although already open apps do not take on the change).
All in all, some extremely good news for non-english computer users.
Second, Israel-bashing: Israel had been blessed with an asshole of a science minister - Michael Eitan. That idiot sold Israel's computing standards for thirty bits of silver to Mr. Balmer. We elected the shit, we have to grin and bear it.
Third, Use the tool that does the job - you MUST have Hebrew? In Israel that means MS whatever. Be willing to go as far as setting a special "Windows compilance workstation" for this kind of work. Which, by the way, is what I and another of my friends did in a real-life, actual, working company - the entire computing, scientific and development department uses Linux, IRIX and what-not, the bean-counters use Windows 3.11.
Works.
Marc
My machine never crashes (and when I say never I mean once a week).
<princess_bride>I don't think that word means what you think it means.</princess_bride>
<clinton>That depends on what your definition of the word "is" is.</clinton>
Gosh, you're absolutely right. How could I not be swayed by such powerful mentation?
Nope, no sig
This page explains to Java developers how to develop bidirectional support. It even covers how to do English with Hebrew embedded in the middle of the string. I would suggest finding Java applications that use such techniques. The full Internationalization Trail of the Java Tutorial is here.
For example, here is a Java Calendar that does Hebrew from IBM.
Here is an editor using an older form of Java that does Hebrew, also from IBM
You might even ask JEdit if they have or are planning on adding support for multiple languages, importing/exporting Word, etc..
Anyways, just a thought.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
This may seem like a silly, Americo-centric question, but why do you need to do terribly much online in Hebrew? .il websites, most signage and websites are written in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
Your English is compeltely comprehensible to me, and, for the good or for the bad, most (please realize: this is not a troll, it is an opinion) 'worthwhile' content is in English. From what I've seen of pictures of Israel and
Unfortunately, if you're going to use a non-mainstream OS, you are going to have to deal with less support for less common (read: Non-US) situations.
As for getting people to stop sending you MS based unreadable stuff, ROT-13 it and mail it back with 'here are my comments/corrections' as a subject/body.
Brant
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Ever tried to read a plain text hebrew file on Linux?
It takes quite a bit of work to find out how to make linux display hebrew.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
> As you say, bidi support is due to Localized Windows, not IE. IE handles Hebrew text input only because the OS does. Netscape (non-localized) supports this just fine.
Not so, I've viewed hebrew sites via non-localized WinME.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Well, here are your options:
1> Dual boot
2> Get a second computer, run windows on it.
3> What OS do you run?
If I were you, I would get Win2K pro, and install VMWare to use the OS that you use now.
Win2K (All versions) has builtin support for hebrew, and VMWare can run on them.
I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but Win2K is very stable, I don't see any reason why you won't use it as a base OS for reading hebrew text (install Office 2000 viewers, and disable all the unneccecary services, this should give enough room for the other OS that you are using.
4> Get over whatever hard feeling you've toward MS Os, and use Win2k, most likely it'll be easier than using VMWare.
5> If your OS can run VMWare or some equilent, then install Win95 + office 2000 viewers (for minimal overhead).
P.S. Avoid using ME all at costs
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Word & Excel aren't half of it.
Sites that uses hebrew the way they should are supported only by IE.
Email that you send in hebrew wouldn't be readable on most email clients.
If you want hebrew, you need Windows.
Hell, you can't exchange *plain-text* hebrew files easily.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
A> Opera isn't free.
B> Opera's hebrew support is highly limited, and rely heavily on Windows' own ability to support hebrew.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Price, Price, Price.
To put it in simple terms, if he buys a mac on the US, it will cost half about third if he buys one in Israel
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
1> Usually not an option. I can send an email that will reach anybody in the world within minutes, you can't do the same with paper mail.
2> Even plain text files containing hebrew are hard to share on non-ms (and some MS) platforms.
Latin transliteration is a MAJOR PITA. No two persons spell a word alike. If it takes me a minute to understand a text in english, half that time to understand same text in hebrew, it would take me five minutes or more to comprehend the same text in Latin transliteration of Hebrew. Five time that much to write it.
And I'm not the average user.
I've very good control of the English language, most people in Israel don't.
3> *Not* an option.
4> Multi boot would probably the best thing. I would suggest Win95 Enabled + Office 2000 viewers, it has the best boot time and all the functionality he need.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Free Software WILL get there.
Whenever someone sends me an ms-office document, I reply and ask to send a non-propriety format, even though there are several free solutions that can view these documents.
I also write angry complaints to sites that I as a tax payer pay for, and cannot be used by free software (the msn hosted galey tsahal site, for example).
It will not be true to say that hebrew is dealt properly by non microsoft systems (pango, mozilla and wine are not a good solutions, by any standard), and I'm afraid this issue will only be resolved in a few years.
The main problem is that people use the standards provided by microsoft, which can be used by microsft only systems.
Start resisting, so people will start thinking twice before they write content that will not be availabe to a growing community of viewers in israel.
Until hebrew is dealt properly by mozilla, the standard should be iso-8859-8 (visual hebrew).
I love burekas in the morning
It's very simple. Apple has always been the first to bring technology to the home user, and the last to know how to sell it. The only retailer that sells apple computers in israel charges twice (!) as much as in the US for many of the apple made products. Down with yeda and apple's poor marketing!
I love burekas in the morning
Seems to me you have already lost your freedom by not being able to read or use M$ files. I don't know that I have a suggestion on a solution, but using M$ software will not be the end of the world, and we wil all still love you no matter how hard you kiss Bill Gates ARSE.
Razzious Domini
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
2) The open-source mantra is "If you see a need, fill it yourself." Get involved in one of the open source projects creating Hebrew word processors and add the .DOC import functionality. (This is supposedly documented somewhere in MSDN; it's basically RTF but it gets embraced and extended with each new version of Word. Still, there shouldn't be too much reverse engineering necessary.) Contribute Hebrew support to Mozilla. Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
I have to give Microsoft credit for good support of alternate character sets, especially in Win2K, which is my OS of daily use. Programming for Unicode or alternate code pages is still a little arcane, even in Java which claims to support it natively. What exactly is the extent of multi-character-set support in linux, gnome, KDE, etc.?? Also, from my limited experience Star Office can read MSOffice formats fairly well. -chris
-cbare
I've never tried Hebrew on BeOS, however I like there Japanese support a lot. As for BeOS being abandoned, Be claims to still be workign on it. BeOS and BIA both share the same code base, so any update to one will be reflected in the other. That said, I do feel that they have realy dragged there feet on Bone and OpenGL.
Just a guess, but is the non-unix pc based OS your using BeOS? Thats the only one I can think of with any extended UTF8 support. If so the XLS and DOC problem is a small one that should be able to be solved by using one of the office suites for BeOS. As for Linux/Unix support of extended languages, have you tried SGIs Irix? It has rather good UTF support and seems to have Hebrew as an option (I've never tried it however). Check out this link which may have some usefull information. http://www.sgi.co.il/press2405.htmlf As for web browsers, try this link for Hebrew web fonts that work in Netscape. http://www1.snunit.k12.il/heb_new.html
Hehehehehe...if u haven't already noticed.
There is no such thing as 'world peace'.
Your comment that "Microsoft seems to have it locked up" the market is absurd. I have heard zero evidence that MS has acted in any anti-competitive way in Isreal. The free market seems to be functioning efficiently. Microsoft is providing you with an acceptable product at a price the market tolerates.
If the product were unacceptable, or the price was too high, the market would demand an alternative solution, and a commercial software vendor would create it.
I just don't understand what the problem with using software that gets the job done.
For one thing, why are those two views mutually exclusive?
They're mutually exclusive because you can't always "buy what works best" and at the same time "don't support corporations whose business tactics you disapprove of." Yes, you could qualify those statements as you point out, but that's not what i'm talking about. The people uttering these things tend to do so in a smug, condescending sort of way. They certainly don't qualify them.
Doesn't the way a corporation does business affect whether or not the product will work best for me? (i.e. in a year, I'll have to upgrade because everybody else did and they're all using a new file format which isn't supported by my "old" software.)
Not necessarily. Using Microsoft as an example, I would be more likely to take issue with their underhanded tactics against competitors than their "upgrade treadmill." I think that helps to illustrate how business tactics don't necessarily affect the product.
When dealing with a computer newbie, for example, people might just say ...
You don't find a whole lot of computer newbies around /. :) Even if you did think you were talking to a computer newbie, on /. you would at least acknowledge that you were simlifying things for that reason so as not to attract a ton of corrections, complaints, and flames, not to mention the wrath of moderators who might deem your post to be flamebait or troll.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
True, but history does give plenty of examples where religion was the cause, or at least the excuse and means for war, civil or otherwise.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Oh yeah... and that's not to mention the various other forms of repression that governments of whatever form would inflict on the people in the name of religion.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
But to get done what you need to get done, you have 3 options:
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Learning another language is a great idea, particularly if you work with computers (sys admin or programming), but it's a little harsh to expect ordinary Basque speakers to do so.
u x/. Info on other Basque localisations is at http://www.dmoz.org/World/Euskara/Informatika/
y =kde-i18n-Basque.
There are lots of OSs that support Basque, including MacOS, Windows and Linux - did you try looking?
I did a quick seach for Basque & Linux and found the following Basque language resources at Open Directory: http://www.dmoz.org/World/Euskara/Informatika/Lin
Also, KDE appears to have a Basque localised version: http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?quer
you've never used a true IBM os have you? OS/2, OS/400, and AIX all support as many (if not more) languages and locales as Windows, and HAVE for a lot longer than windows.
Remember that the "I" in IBM stands for International. One thing you learn VERY quickly at IBM is how to NLS enable your code... nothing is hardcoded in any language unless it is no meant for the user to see (assertions for example) and those all have language independent identifiers (mix of ascii letters and numbers).
There's a point in the development cycle at IBM where you have to have all translated messages put in place, because the resource file will be sent to translation centers all over the world to encode to the local language... having to change a message after that date involves begging pleading and a chunk of budget.
There's an entire test phase (TVT - Translation Verification Test) where they bring in people who speak the langauge natively and walk through EVERY interaction the user can have and validate that the messages are all properly translated, and used. (a buddy of mine got a severity 1 defect raised against him because after translation the highlighted shortcut letters on his menu spelled out a profanity after translation, his response: find a different translation, or move the shortcut characters.)
> PS: I know this will get mod'ed down as it's Pro-Microsoft, but before you pull the trigger, re-read the post. He has NO
> alternatives.
This, in a nutshell, is exactly why our correspondent should find a way to create an alternative to Microsoft. When you trust one source to solve all of your questions, & you encounter a problem that their work cannot solve, you have found yourself at a dead end.
This is Matt Walsh's argument for avoiding MS-ware, & it makes sense. Do you want to trust your livelihood to the software equivalent of monoculture?
I hope our correspondent from Israel studies the more thoughtful answers to his question, & realises that it may be time for him to contribute to an alternative to the de facto MS standard in his country. It's either that, or hope that Microsoft can succeed where King Canute failed -- fight the ebbing tide.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Really? I've installed the latest KDE (from source), and all I hebrew characters show up as spaces in Konq, and ??? in the window manager. What else do I need to do?
Either way, I have to say that MS is miles ahead - a default install of MSIE 5.5 allows fully functional Hebrew browsing (without playing around with fonts) plus Hebrew text entry and full bilingual and bidirectional support across the OS.
Though, I have noticed that Israelis have a strong tendancy to send windows-1255 HTML email for no good reason.
And, when MacOS X comes out, you can have the warm fuzzies associated with knowing that, even though you're running on a proprietary GUI layer, you are running an open source OS underneath.
_Deirdre
(Praises from a satisfied user).
If I had no or limited funds, or the ferry operator was a real s.o.b., I'd build the bridge.... and it wouldn't take very long, either, because several of my fellow travellers just happen to have self-replicating bridges in their backpacks, which, since they are trying to improve them, they will let me use for free.
The analogy is specious. The hard parts are already done. Even on a dog-slow machine, a Linux install takes a couple of hours. Konqueror comes with, alreddie, no downloading new components across the web just to start surfing.
Besides, once the bridge is built, then everyone can walk across for free... but it's for pedestrians only. Jokers with more money than sense riding in their big Land Crushers have to take the ferry and pay the toll troll. Me, I need the exercise. Seeya....
--
Open source, open minds.
The command line is the front line
I remember just how irritated I was when the Mandrake 7.2 update started downloading thirty four meg worth of KDE internationalizations, 46 packages in all, from Afrikaans to Welsh, including not only Hebrew but three versions of Chinese... things which, sadly enough, are of little use to this American.
So don't tell me Linux isn't internationalized from here to Mars and back. I had to go fscking clean up my hard drive. At least RPM made it reasonably easy...
Yeah, I know, I'm committing heresy again, blasting Linux. But hey, at least the packages are the, for free, for those that need them... and, as has been pointed out, Konqueror even goes so far as to grok MSFT's version of Hebrew.
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We're here, we're free,
get used to it.
At the risk of massive flames:
The so-called freedom you are claiming sounds a lot more like rebellion; which is not the same thing. You have imprisoned yourself in the solitary confinement of your unnamed OS.
Unless your reason for not liking Windows has to do with functional problems then your hatred is misplaced. It seems that you've picked a fight, but lacking any enemy you've resorted to beating yourself.
If you want a non-Windows solution then you'll probably have find a way to come up with one yourself. I understand that's how open-source got started in the first place.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
It appears to be a political issue for him as well as he mentions that he feel more free when using GNU/Linux.
And if you yourself has something against this sort of politics then perhaps you aren't seeing the big picture?
This fellow was obviously not looking forward to hacking up his own solution, so obviously the easiest course of action for him would be to swallow his pride and use another OS.
Actually, I guess I just wrote the analogy because it was fun to write. Nevermind.
--
Get a Mac and thumb your nose at the world. The Hebrew support is excellent. I would never give mine up in a million years, it's the only thing that's not completely brain-dead when it comes to non-Roman languages. Linux/BSD just can't hold a candle to the Mac's multilingual support.
Unless he installs Windows. It's all he can do NOW to rectify his CURRENT situation.
It boils down to what you NEED. Computers are nothing more than tools that do a job.
...
Don't let your OS choice be a political issue, it a matter of what you need your computer to do. If only Windows fits that need, then use it.
If utility disqualifies an issue from being considered in a political context, what issues are left that should be political?
For most people in this world, convenience and comfort are the highest values they aspire to. Should that be true for everyone?
A very few people look at a company like Microsoft and see a pattern of behavior that includes bullying business partners, anticompetitive practices and strategic undermining of standards processes for their own private gain. Opinions may differ on specific issues, but supposing that someone pretty much agrees with that characterization of Microsoft, what do you think he should do about it?
What is the point of having values and principles if they are utterly subjuated to immediate utility?
Most of us make some compromises to get along in a Microsoft dominated world. For that reason, I don't feel I can castigate people who choose to live within the paternalistic embrace of Microsoft. However this attitude that it is somehow quixotic or even a bit perverted to want to know about alternatives I do not understand. This is the value proposition that Microsoft offers: We will set the (defacto) standards, so you'll never have to think about alternatives again.
What's so bad about somebody who wants to opt out of this proposition?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I haven't tried the Hebrew Language Kit for MacOS personally, but I have coworkers who have used the Chinese Language Kit and been happy. Best page I could find about Hebrew Language Kit is on the Apple Japan site (don't know why it's not on Apple.com).
That may be true for Hebrew. In 1998, Microsoft refused to translate Windows into Icelandic, even when the Icelandic government offered to pay. They only relented after a lot of bad publicity and threats of legislation from the Icelandic government.
Icelandic is a language with a quarter of a million speakers and a national government on its side. If they have difficulty negotiating with Microsoft, then what hope is there for the 90% of languages with less speakers and no government support?
Sorry to argue with your point, which you may have only meant to apply to Hebrew, but this is one place where I think non-free software can be really bad. Even if companies offer some support for a language in one version of a product, there's no guarantee that they'll continue supporting that language in future. Minority language speakers are left in a state of precarious dependence. On the other hand, free software can offer the chance to have sustainable support for a language, as long as there's a single fluent speaker willing to put in the time.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Bullshit. It's about Microsoft having created a proprietory Hebrew character set (windows 1255) when there were already open standards available (iso-8859-8). One reason he can't read Hebrew text with Netscape is because everyone is using the Windows character set, and not unicode or iso-8859-8.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
If you are talking about a Desktop OS, why not use Windows (you can always duel boot).
If you are talking about servers, who cares what language its in. WebServers don't care, and almost all of the major app servers handle locales perfectly fine.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Ya, bonehead that I am, I didn't do much research, as most of what I do/read/write is in english or hebrew with english letters (ba'atzlecha!).
I'll give those links a thorough reading before I comment again.
Thanks.
rJames.org - illustration
switch abck to Linux.
Localization in Linux is improving, but how close is total Linux support for languages like Japanese and Hebrew that are difficult to fit into your normal, left-to-right, single byte character infrastructure?
So why the Linux adjenda? The origianl author went out of his/her way to NOT mention Linux.
FreeBSD's ports collection supports 400+ Japanese localizations, 70+ Chinese, 20+ Russian, 9+ Vietamese, 2 French and 2 Hebrew. There is a reason for $10 million in investments from Japan in FreeBSD in the past few months. Combined with the 15-20% of the Open Source OS market FreeBSD has, FreeBSD is making fine progress in internationalization, thank you very much.
The people who *WRITE* code need to think a far bigger picture than the closed-world Linux only mind-think of Cliff and dvk. Show that you are a 'think big' kinda coder. Read up on unicode, usage of I18N/L18N or even the physically impaired. Such is not done by most code authors.
WinterKnight, the computer is a tool for communication. So you have a choice: Use the tools you have, *OR* (re)write tools to do what you want to do. Contact Mozilla, and see who has expressed an interest in making hooks for hebrew. Pick the tools you need, then make ports happen to unicode. And, try to get authors of code to design for Unicode/physically hampered and to write portable software. Having a 2nd machine and using VNC so you have one display, a switchbox to the 2nd machine (one display, one keyboard), or using a product like VMware and running Windows as a virtual machine are other options besides multiboot. These solutions avoid the time multibooting takes.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Here are two pieces of solace for you. 1. Help is comming, and you can be part of it. I can't imagine no one else has thought of this and is working on it. 2. Your English looks good.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He should help GNOME, Mozzilla, and Star Office if he has the time. The more people who do this, the sooner no one has to put up with this junk again. Propriatary formats are dumb. Take two doses of Free Software and call me in the morning.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
I'm probably wrong, but doesn't windows support Basque? Come to think of it, what kind of special needs are there for an OS to support Basque?
I am beginnig to think that they are the same thing. Or at least inseparable. Non-orthagonal. Not being flip.
1. See Lessig's arguments in "Code". Code is Architecture is Law. Making of law *is* political.
2. You wouldn't argue (I hope) that choosing a country to live in is a political descision. Why should choosing an OS to live in be apolitical? Separation of the two is like saying The country one chooses to live in should be solely on the tax rate.
3. I feel certain one could construct a hybrid verbal/math proof of non-orthaganality, but I've forgotten too much linear algebra. I see a matrix with a diagonal of "1"s and everything goes blank.
Yes, he's suggesting that poor soul to move in order to avoid using Windows.
Get a life!!!
Actually, there's a page on OS/2 Netscape that mentions various options, one of which, turned on with user_pref("browser.bidi.bidi_enabled", true), allows it to view Arabic and Hebrew pages even if you're not on an Arabic or Hebrew OS/2 system, if I understand it correctly. For that matter, there's a version (not the latest, alas) of StarOffice for OS/2--can it import some of those other proprietary-format files people foist on him?
Sorry, but I'm a linguist... I can't resist questions about Basque. Basque is spoken in the Basque country, an area which coincides with northern Spain and southern France. The political relationship between Basques and the French and Spanish government is tense, and there is sometimes violence. You can read about it at this little page, which also has an introduction to the language. As for the writing system, Basque doesn't use any non-ASCII characters at all. But there's not a whole lot of Basque editions of O'Reilley books. Heh. Ten points if you send me an email and you know what 'ergative' means hee. (Basque is ergative.)
fieldmethods.net: nlp and stuff like that
No, you don't have only one choice. You have at least three choices: do nothing and continue complaining about the lack of alternatives, switch to Microsoft, or help to develop a non-MS alternative. Remember that if nobody had decided that working on *BSD/Linux/whatever was worthwhile because Microsoft had the market locked up, those potential alternative wouldn't exist. And I'm willing to bet that WinterKnight isn't the only Hebrew speaker in the world who wants a non-MS alternative, so there are going to be other people to help develop Hebrew support for other Operating Systems.
Why not work to develop a better tool instead? The only way there will ever be an alternative to unpleasant choices is if somebody stands up and develops one. If you want Basque support, develop some. People have bothered to develop Esperanto support, so it should certainly be possible to do the same for an "easy" language like Basque.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
You need to have the backingstore option switched on in X. It tells you how in the FAQ.
All what you are talking about is because most of the people is taking MS products as the de facto standard when there should be something else. .xls and belongs to MS. We must wait until the situation is unstable enough and people realises that MS is setting too many of the important standards themselves. .doc or .xls, it is difficult to evolve to a non proprietary standard.
I am saying that there should be standarization in things like spreadsheet files, formatted text documents, and all that is related to computing so as everyone can talk to each other.
But this is impossible to enforce because of the monopolistic situation in which MS stands: if there was an standard set on spreadsheet files, maybe Linux would use it but no way MS would do the same, simply because the de facto standard is already
I go for standards set by specific bodies formed by people comming from different directions: it proved to work in JPEG or in MPEG, and fortunatelly we can share pictures via email, no matter who is on the other end. But once an standard is set, like in the case of
I live in a country that's completely under Microsoft domination...
Especialy when most e-mail from people arrive as a MS-Word attachments, or they use Excel for making even a silly, simple list of items. Its also hard when 90% of the web sites from that local country are 'designed for IE5+ and above'.
Sounds a hell of a lot like the US. Are you sure you aren't from Israel, Ohio?
Seriously, though. I see your concern. You either have to eat it and dual boot, or use virtual machines.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
That's what I do. (Actually, it's more like Windows 98 at school, Linux/Windows 2000/FreeBSD/Texas Instruments 99-4A/whatever I can get my mitts on at home. :) )
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
hebrew support in MacOSX is ready and will be released March 24th.
The MS Office suite for OsX is scheduled for summer release.
MS Office will, by virtue of its Mac app status using the new implementation of WorldScript, work with Hebrew in right-to-left format and font.
On March 24th, my PowerMac will run OsX in Hebrew, alongside my KDE2 in Hebrew, alongside my Os/2 in hebrew.
There's more than one answer to this question besides Mac.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
MSIE 5.5 has four different Hebrew fonts at its aid.
Hebrew ISO Visual
Hebrew ISO Logical
Hebrew Dos
Hebrew Windows
If you don't have MSIE auto select the best encoding, then you have to manually pick whichever choice will display Hebrew in the correct word and letter order. You also have the option to display the page as right to left instead of left to right, and this too will flip the letter and word order as it shifts the vertical scroll bar to the other side of the
screen.
This is NOT what I'd call a clean solution.
Hebrew text entry is only valid in IE because they did manage to set the default proportional font and fixed-width font correctly. With minimal adjustment, this can be done in any browser.
(My in-laws seem to favor Netscape.)
In Konqueror, on my Mandrake 7.2 system using defaults in the install (okay, it was quick and dirty), the ISO 8859-8 setting works perfectly. I selected it and like magic, the page was instantly readable.
As you say, bidi support is due to Localized Windows, not IE. IE handles Hebrew text input only because the OS does. Netscape (non-localized)
supports this just fine.
I really need to try my mandrake install again, to see how far along they are in localizing the whole distribution. I normally shy away from being distribution specific in my comments, but Mandrake and TurboLinux seem to be among the farthest along in terms of Internationalization.
(TurboLinux does well with Chinese and other Eastern Languages.)
I highly recommend that you make contact with the Israeli LUGs. They have meetings in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. (Install party in Jerusalem coming up!) www.iglu.org.il
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
always did when I lived there ;)
*Why* did I emmigrate? Mmmm. I dont know, but I know why I'm not going back.
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
cute sweet girl... long term prospects
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
He's not running a UNIX system so it won't do him any good.
--
Garett
One of the main reasons I have used Mac for years is that its Japanese support kicks butt. I used to be a freelance Japanese translator and could not have done it without my crashing all the time, slow, expensive - but multilingual - Mac.
sulli
RTFJ.
VMWare does have a lot of excellent uses. This, however, is not one of them.
Isn't this the essence of a Monopoly situation?
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This guy says he's N-O-T running a unix variant.. which means linux as well. So stop giving him linux only solutions. On the other hand, it would have helped if he told us what OS he was using, so we COULD give him ideas for that OS.
But...
If you're not running Linux, you should be able to build Wine on your platform. As far as I know, Wine will properly do international fonts & formatting if the copy of Windows installed on the box is configured properly.
Monopolies are "simply market economics". The fact that there exist market conditions that create a very high barrier to entry and that effectively exclude other players means that Microsoft has a monopoly.
From an economic point of view, it makes no difference whether Microsoft actively pursued that market position or just accidentally fell into it. That difference is only interesting from a US legal point of view, and even in the US, even if a monopoly position wasn't pursued deliberately, the company or industry in question can still be subjected to government regulation. Their intent and actions merely have to do whether they are legally guilty of wrongdoing.
Of course, in the Microsoft case, I'd argue that they are somewhere in between: their disregard for standards processes, industry standards, and documentation turned out to not only cut their costs but also keep others out of their market. So, I think they are actually responsible for their position. Initially, their actions may not have been deliberate, but I think their later company internal communications show that they actively pursued this strategy as a business strategy (they merely thought that there wasn't anything wrong with it).
Netscape has trouble with your stuff
Your OS and the software you use doesn't generally have the level of language/localization support you need
You're bombarded with an overwhelming majority of MS Word and Excel documents
The web sites you're talking about are optimized for IE.
I'd suggest knocking off the dogmatic adherence to tools that aren't doing the job for you and switch to something that works. Who cares if it's Microsoft? Blasphemy! It's just software, not religion.
This isn't to advocate the use of Microsoft products for every task, across the board. But my philosophy has always been one of using the right tool for the job. That's why I use Oracle as my database, Apache/Linux for my web server, and IE as my browser. If your assortment of Linux, Netscape and various other non-Microsoft software isn't meeting your needs, then you're foolish to boycott the software that does meet them simply out of spite.
blah.
omega_rob
Mac's actually were much more popular than PC's in Arabia because they supported Arabic letters long before PC's did. That's changed nowadays since Windows has been Arabized.
I assume if they support Arabic, a right to left language, they would also support Hebrew, or at least it wouldn't be difficult to get working.
Living like this is very hard, and I keep asking myself if maybe I should just give up and be 'one of the crowd'?"
You act like there is some glorious advantage to using a non-Windows OS for reading e-mail and viewing web pages. There is not. If you told me that you were running an ISP, I would caution you against a Windows solution, but for desktop use, BeOS, Linux, BSD, and other alternative operating systems are a pain.
The reason that so many people have standardized on IE, Outlook, and Word is because they are the best in class. I have used Opera 5, Netscape 6, Mozilla, and a handful of other alternative browsers and, frankly, they just don't work as well. Same thing with word processors. Word is the standard because it is the best. StarOffice, Software602, and others are good efforts, but are not up to the quality of Word. I'm not an apologist for Microsoft. I use Windows and curse it on a daily basis. I just haven't found anything better as a desktop OS (and I've tried Solaris 7, BeOS 4.5 and 5, Linux, and FreeBSD).
while I have no clue about Linux in Hebrew, I can say, "Stand fast, oh chosen one. For the Lord will deliver you from the evil MS! You are his chosen people and he will not lead you astray. Little Billy is no match for the Lord. He knows it. Your Saviour Linux is coming in due time. Don't become one of the crowd with the MS mark of the beast on your forehead! Be strong and keep the UNIX faith!!
2)Install Microsoft.
3)Write your own software to do the job you want.
What else is there to say? Nothing. You have to choose between hardship and your principles. Choose wisely.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
Luckily for people outside the US, alot of them speak 2+ languages. If one of them is "American" then they are in luck because any OS will have a US option for language. If a person is using a OS that does no fully support their native tongue, the only immediate work arounds are changing OSes to one which does or if a person does speak another language look into support for that language on your current OS.
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
Let me explain you the way hebrew works on the web.
,maybe other browsers.
There are four standards, but only two that matters.
Hebrew Logical & Hebrew Visual
One of them is supported by Netscape, and
This involve writing things *backward*, it doesn't handle line breaks well, and basically a PITA to do.
And there is IE way, in which you write in Hebrew just like you write in english, and it display everything correctly.
Netscape's way result in *bad* looking sites, more often than not.
IE's way works.
To be fair, AFAIK, NS6 (and probably Mozilla) support the IE's way.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Some of you guys take your little anti-microsoft crusade (and yourselves) a little too seriously.
I've found that the same people that make statements like this are also the people make flip remarks such as "Well don't buy their products then" when someone complains about Microsoft's unethical business tactics.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You say you are using a non-Unix variant PC operating system; presumably, this would mean either OS/2 or BeOS. OS/2 comes with Boot Manager, which, while it would require an FDISK to install (and then consumes a primary partition), does an excellent job of switching you from Warp to Win9x/NT (Win2k has issues) and back. I believe BeOS came with Partition Magic and maybe System Commander to enable the same functionality. Also, if you are using Warp, check with the folks at Serenity Systems to see what they have planned for DBCS BiDi support in eCommStation (their successor to OS/2). It's a full upgrade to eCS, but if you're sticking with OS/2, it's definitely worth looking into.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
You have a choice to make:
Which option would you choose?
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They convert and they have a link collection to similar services: iconv.com.
If you're doing it just out of spite, you probably are going to need to buck up and deal with it. If you can't communicate with the rest of the country/world, then you're oinly doing yourself a disservice.
In this case, it isn't about Microsoft being a monopoly. It's about Microsoft having added value for YOUR country, and having addressed a market that no one else cares about. That said, you might as well make the jump. You're getting nowhere by denying yourself the ability to communicate electronically with the rest of your country.
PS: I know this will get mod'ed down as it's Pro-Microsoft, but before you pull the trigger, re-read the post. He has NO alternatives.
This has nothing to do with monopoly. It's simply market economics. You write code for the markets with the most money. It's not a matter of convincing others that it's worth the time and effort to locallize.
Still, this doesn't do anything to solve this particular person's problem at this time.
Rader
Are you familiar with catdoc and xls2csv? I don't know how well they cope with text that is non-(8859-1) and non-unicode, though. As to the proprietory character set thing, the answer in the long run is unicode, but meanwhile mozilla 0.7 claims to have some Hebrew support.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
So WHY are most of the threads "blah blah blah Linux blah blah" ? If it's a Non-UNIX variant and it's not M$, that leaves QNX, Be, OS/2 and maybe one or two others. So you can stop tootling the Linux horn for the moment.
My default suggestion would be "buy a Mac", since it's not Windows, has decent Hebrew support and M$ codes for the OS. Assuming you don't have that option, then dual booting between whatever it is you're using and Winblows would be about the only acceptable solution, as the majority of the software in question [Office], is not being ported to linux.
Or, you could move. I wouldn't suggest the USA- with the present anal-retentiveness of the body politic going bughouse, I've been contemplating greener pastures myself. Considering my own choice of platforms, this definitely leaves Israel off the list.
The fact is, if noone else has done enough, you only have one choice. Why is it so bad? At least you /have/ a choice at all.
I was raised speaking basque, and NO operating systems support my language. SO I have been forced to learn English. But the benefits far outweigh the penalties. I say quit crying and use the best tool for the job. Even if it's the only tool. Even if it's MS.
Then when Linux has superb Hebrew support and Star Office works flawlessly with it, you just have more options.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
Well, if I'm not mistaken, you can always run Windows2000 within Linux. Sure, you need some heafty hardware to take care of it, but it can be done...
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Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Emigrate.
Makes me laugh... in a predictable wave of Linux-zealotry, some well meaning people forgot that the person is NOT running Linux. So suggestions like Pango and the like, while informative, aren't very helpful. Remember: There are OTHER operating systems that are alternatives to Windows that aren't Linux.
It boils down to what you NEED. Computers are nothing more than tools that do a job. If you current computer does everything that you bought it for, then use it. If it doesn't, maybe you should use a different OS until your current OS supports the features that fit YOUR NEEDS. Personally, I've been using Macs since about 92. I have NEVER thought to myself, "Crap, I need to use Windows to do this" MacOS fits my needs. It may or may not fit yours.
Don't let your OS choice be a political issue, it a matter of what you need your computer to do. If only Windows fits that need, then use it.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Don't let your OS choice be a political issue, it a matter of what you need your computer to do. If only Windows fits that need, then use it.
This is one thing that always irritates me on /. You have a bunch of people saying that you should just choose the product that works best, regardless of who makes it. Then you have a bunch of people saying that if you don't like the way a certain corporation does business, don't buy their products. These two views are mutually exclusive, yet I hear them both uttered by the same people fairly often.
What it comes down to is that the choice of OS or any other product can very well be based on concerns other than whether the product does what you need it to do. We can't just surrender our beliefs and conscience over to unfettered capitalism and support corporations with our money regardless of how they do business or the kinds of practices they engage in. To ignore immoral acts by a corporation when they come to light and support that corporation with your money is to offer tacit support for their actions. Many people can't stomach such a thing. Too bad there aren't more people like that.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The Macintosh has arguably even better support for top-down or right-to-left foreign alphabets than Windows. Also, you can run the MS applications (Word and whatnot, including IE) on it.
And if you would like to have the power of UNIX, OS X will enable you to run things the proper *nix way. True, you'll have to wait maybe 6 months until Hebrew support is finished, and of course that you'll have to buy new hardware, but by that time you may find that you're in the market for a new machine anyway.
In a relatively short time, there will be a BSD based OS with applications relevant to the documents you are trying to process, and support for Hebrew.
"Perfect numbers like perfect men are rare." -Descartes
Face facts: Microsoft has chosen to fully support the Hebrew language. Other OS and applications companies have not. Microsoft wins this round, fair and square: you can hardly decry them for being open-minded enough to realize that a global OS/global application needs to support global languages.
There's no end to the bad things that can be said about Microsoft.
Poor internationalization isn't one of them.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
[taken from that site]
Version 2.0 of KDE featured several improvements in the field of Hebrew support in its interface. Among these improvements:
-henrik
When some numb-nut sends me a document in Word or Powerpoint of whatever and my open software won't open it I just send it up to http://createpdf.adobe.com and they mail back a nice PDF of it.
They let you do three documents as a trial, then its $10/mo or $100/year.
They handle many of the popular but proprietary formats.
And for goodness sake, stop reading slashdot and get out and VOTE!
or try www.freeviewer.com
Check out the Pango project over on the gnome web pages. They apparently plan to incorporate support for all those funky languages that go up and down, right and left, diagonally, or however.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I lived in Tel-Aviv for two years, and still support my in-laws computer there.
I know *exactly* what you're going through.
If you're looking at linux as an alternative, GTK2 is going to have right-to-left support, and KDE2 has it.
Web browsing is perfect at handling msIE html and their version of Hebrew, if you use Konqueror.
I believe Kword works for editing the Hebrew, but I haven't tried it recently enough to remeber how well it does right to left text entry.
Have you gotten in touch with the Linux User Groups in Israel? You have two: Haifux and IGLU.
go to www.iglu.org.il and join the e-groups list. They have lectures now and again, given in Hebrew, both at Technion and Tel-Aviv University.
As for the email attachments, half the time Outlook Express in Hebrew in windows on my machine can't read emails generated by OE on another machine.
My machines are running:
win98 Hebrew-enabled,
Mandrake 7.2 (KDE2 has the hebrew fonts already in it... hebrew is an install option for a completely localized system)
and MacOsX public beta. the full release will have hebrew as an option for localization.
My wife's laptop runs win98 localized hebrew. someday when I get the energy, I'll make her an x-client and spawn the display of my kde2 to her machine.
I've always been surprised that Linux hasn't taken off wildly in Israel-- I expect that when right-to-left wordprocessing and presentation composing is complete, that people will jump to linux in Israel, because of its free nature.
(Many Israelis 'warez' MS products, so much so that last year Microsoft threatened to stop localizing for Hebrew languages unless the piracy diminished. I remember reading that news item at www.globes.co.il)
You CAN do everything you want to do, in Hebrew, without MS.
b'hatzlecha!
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Multilingual support. Mac OS is world-ready. Input, display, edit and print a variety of Latin-based languages in addition to Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Indian, Japanese and more.
Of course, using Apple doesn't exactly free you from MS documentation...
sulli
RTFJ.
- Mozilla with some Hebrew extensions.
- Somethinng from the IGLU FAQ, with links on places to find Hebrew fonts and keyboard support.
- Some common Linux applications with Hebrew support.
Hope that helps! As far as the Word® documents and Excel® spreadsheets, I would ask your friends and co-workers to convert them to another format before sending them to you, or run Wine and emulate Office2000 (which works fairly well). That's what I do (although I only need to contend with English and German)--
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy