Mac Hebrew Soap Opera Continues

Dark Nexus writes "The Register has a response (actually FROM Microsoft this time) in the continuing soap opera surrounding support for Hebrew (and other right to left languages) in Microsoft products for the Mac."

Comments

Wow!

[vegetablespork]

Two posts already and no Godwin's law invocation. OK, here goes:

Microsoft's obvious anti-Semitism, demonstrated clearly by their refusal to support Hebrew in Mac Office products, belies an obvious similarity to the Nazi party.

In the interest of fairness, however, Office:Mac doesn't support Arabic, either.

It IS just good business

[Spencerian]

Otherwise, Microsoft would have to cater to other languages with smaller populations as well. Logically, if Apple doesn't provide support, adding support in the MS product doesn't make sense, either.

I'm betting that there's a larger clientele than Hebrew out there. It's an artificial language, and is growing pretty fast, based on some stats (yes, yes, I know--lies, damned lies, and statistics).

Klingon. It's not widespread as Esperanto, but much hotter.

I bet the Cut/Copy/Paste commands in Klingonnase would be more proactive...like...

SLASH/CLONE/SMASH

Re:It IS just good business

[Chacham]

If the Jewish users really wanted to use the software, they could simply pick up the German versions since Yiddish, the language spoken by most Jews (besides English), is the language which modern Hebrew is based upon.

Actually, Yiddish is based on High German. Ivrit (Modern Hebrew) is based on Hebrew. Also, Yiddish is traditionally spelled with Hebrew letters.

Re:It IS just good business

[foobar104]

If the Jewish users really wanted to use the software, they could simply pick up the German versions since Yiddish, the language spoken by most Jews (besides English), is the language which modern Hebrew is based upon.

No, no. Yiddish is related only tangentially to Hebrew. Yiddish is, as you point out, related to German, but not closely enough for a German speaker to understand Yiddish or vice-versa. In fact, Yiddish is just barely more closely related to High German than English is.

Yiddish first appeared around the 10th century in what is now southwestern Germany. At the time it was a dialect of German that included a large number of Hebrew words. Later, as the European Jews moved east, the language picked up some Slavic influences. In the 19th century, some English words and constructions began to enter the language as Jews from Europe and the Baltic immigrated to the US. Since World War II, of course, Yiddish has changed significantly, since there are so few Jews left in Germany, Poland, and what used to be Czechoslovakia.

Modern Yiddish is written from right to left in a modified Hebrew alphabet, making it utterly incomprehensible to people who speak only German. And, presumably, vice versa.

Modern Hebrew, the language spoken in Israel, is, again, only distantly related to Yiddish. Yiddish borrowed a good deal of vocabulary from Hebrew, but the pronounciation is influenced by Slavic languages, and the grammar is a mixture of High German and English. A Hebrew speaker might be able to pick out the occasional word of Yiddish, in writing, but almost certainly not in speech.

I'm afraid your suggestion was completely wrong.

(What I'm really curious about, though, is how many anti-Semitic trolls this post is going to inspire.)

Re:It IS just good business

[RevAaron]

From your sig:

You have good knowledge of UNIX and a girlfriend. Not many people can say that.

Luckily, I can! And I can speak a little Klingon!

Re:It IS just good business

[muon1183]

Actually, apple does provide support, and microsoft already has the code to be able to support this, they just refuse to release it or allow other people to implement it (the israeli government offered to pay for implementing it, but microsoft refused). You should read the article before commenting on it.

.sig, what's that?

Re:It IS just good business

[Spencerian]

Thanks for clarifying. I did read the article, but I misstated what was there.

I should have said that Microsoft's MBU head indicated that Apple had not made the Hebrew implementation a "top-tier" implementation, so they would not either.

Again, it's good business sense not to go out of your way to support something that the OS would not handle. That's also a good tech decision--OS X is not OS 9, and trying to hack it will make a bad time for everyone. I'm pleased at the logic of MS's response, since this IS Microsoft we're talking about here--a company that is rarely slowed by most kinds of coding ethics. The MBU is a notable exception to this, I think.

Re:It IS just good business

[Spencerian]

I liked the sig...saw it on some other chat site. I believe it comes from a movie, but don't know which one.

P.S.: Don't mind the ACs (tokhe straav) who have no honor and no name in a true Klingon's eyes! ;)

Reminds me of the 20 Comments of Klingon Programmers that circulate. Maybe that's what MS needs to fix their problems.

Re:It IS just good business

[RevAaron]

Silly ACs. What he doesn't know is that my girlfriend is a big geek too. Knows about as much (not much! :P) Klingon as I do. The tokhe straav must be jealous that I have someone with whom to watch TNG, IRC and make sweet love. hehe. :)

To the tokhe straav, I say: Hab soSlI' quch!

Qapla' jup!

Re:It IS just good business

[foniksonik]

Also supports Pig-Latin

Re:It IS just good business

[foobar104]

Borrowing writing systems is common and does not mean that the languages are at all related.

Yup. My girlfriend is Vietnamese. Vietnamese, unlike all the other east Asian languages, uses the Roman alphabet, just like English. (Well, with the addition of a metric assload of diacriticals to designate tones and whatnot.) But English and Vietnamese are about as unrelated as two languages can be.

Similarly, the Cyrillic alphabet includes characters from the Greek alphabet, but that doesn't mean Russian is particularly closely related to Greek.

But of course the best example is Japanese and Chinese. A long time ago the Chinese ideograms made their way across the China Sea to Japan, where they became part of the Japanese language. In most cases-- or so I remember from my college Japanese courses-- the ideograms carry the same or similar meanings in both languages, but the Japanese have their own pronunciations for them, and of course the grammar and syntax of the languages are totally different. Even the basic semantics of the languages are different; the Chinese languages are tonal, where the pitch of a syllable carries meaning. Japanese doesn't convey meaning with pitch, even though they share the same basic set of ideograms.

Languages are cool.

Re:It IS just good business

[GutBomb]

no, microsoft has the hebrew code in the windows version of office. the mac and windows versions do not share the same codebase. they are feature-similar, and file-format-compatible, but that is it. It would take a greeat effort to add hebrew to the mix, and not just because of the different character set, but also the right to left thing.

Mmmmm.... Capitalism.... *drool*

[Aix]

I think we can all agree that Microsoft is one of the most successful examples of raw capitalism of the past half-century or so. Like them or not, agree with their practices or not, they've got this capitalism thing down pat. The interesting thing about capitalism is that it always descends the gradient - if there is money to be made doing something, somebody will do it. If it really was easy and profitable to include Hebrew language support, why wouldn't they do it? The answer: the would, of course. Is there any chance that these outsiders' data is better? The answer: probably not - we can safely assume that Microsoft Israel exists to a very large extent to do accurate market research in that country.

The point is, there is no way Microsoft wouldn't include the support if it was profitable , almost by definition.

of note

[BigBir3d]

Intel has a big investment in Israel. Intel and Microsoft are in bed together.

MS and Intel would rather have the Israelimarket to themselves.

They probably will.

--

I love conspiracies :-)

Re:of note

[GutBomb]

maybe you could post some sources, or you could just sounding like a dumbass weating an aluminum foil cap.

Re:Microsoft at it again

[foobar104]

If Apple wanted Word to have Hebrew support, then they'd put it in their OS instead of whining that Microsoft doesn't go aout of its way to include it in office.

According to rumor, Hebrew support will be included in Jaguar, the next major version of OS X. Support for scripts other than basic left-to-right was pretty much absent from 10.0 and 10.1, making Hebrew or Arabic localization impossible. With Jaguar, we expect to get expanded support for right-to-left scripts and input methods, opening up Hebrew, Arabic, and Arabic-like languages.

Re:Microsoft at it again

[dalassa]

Minor off-topic rant here:
It is incorrect to refer to Israelis as Israelites.
Israelite refers to a person of a certian religion/ethnic group in the bible and biblical Middle East. Israeli refers to a citizen of modern Israel and does not always imply Jewish though most of the time it does.
</rant>

Re:Microsoft at it again

[foobar104]

Because microsoft didn't put in extra support for Hebrew, Apple has gotten up and fixed the problem.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It's not correct to say that Apple is finishing Hebrew support because Microsoft didn't do it themselves. Apple's been doing support for Hebrew and other non-Roman languages since the WorldScript days in '91 or so. It's just taking a little time to add it to OS X.

Check out the ACTUAL numbers......

[jsimon12]

"Can anyone explain why IE:mac and Outlook Express:mac support Zulu and Portugeuse but not Russian or Hebrew?"

Or incredibly, Arabic and Korean too.



300 million people speak Portuguese
200 million people speak Arabic
65 million speak Korean
8 million speak Zulu

Only 3 million speak Hebrew, and my guess is most also speak English. As for the Russians, most who are wealthy enough to afford a computer speak/read English or another more common language. So I think it is simple economics. Sure Israel will pay to add Hebrew support, but will they pay for the ongoing costs in supporting the language for years to come?

So all and all this is NOT a case of unfair competition (which I would prefer it to be, cause I don't like the beast that is Microsoft), nor is it a case of Anti-Semetism (which I am sure people are lead to belive it might be), it is a case of economics, plain and simple. Selling 2000 copies of some software program doesn't outway the issue of ongoing support over years and years. I am sure if Israel would agree to pay for the support forever then Microsoft/Apple would relent and take them up on the offer.

Re:Check out the ACTUAL numbers......

[red5]

I could not agree more. Some would like to site that since it is in fact supported in windows that this is all moot. That is untrue the reason that it won't and can't be supported on macs is that the macintosh market in israel is almost nonexistent. If you want Office X to support Hebrew perhaps first you should build a mac/Hebrew market.

Re:Check out the ACTUAL numbers......

[Ayende Rahien]

Actually, Israel population is over 6 millions, nearly all of them speaks hebrew, large numbers of them don't speak english, certainly not to any degree that would allow them to use a program in English.

There is a Office in hebrew, and it's very good.
The problem that there are very few Macs in Israel, so I would imagine that the market-share of Mac-owners that needs hebrew support is very few, especially considerring that those *would* likely to know english.

Re:Chuckles while shaking head...

[RevAaron]

> I'm not sure whether I should laugh, or cry.

Like all good things in life!

But no, we don't dress up like Klingons or whisper kinky klingon phrases when nekked. We *very* far from being that nerdy. :P

Apps that will support Arabic/Hebrew in 10.2?

[bedouin]

I'm glad to see that there's Arabic support coming in 10.2. One question though: does anyone know if IE properly displays Arabic encoded pages when run under 10.2? Also, anyone have an idea about mail apps that properly display, and allow Arabic input? I know that Mozilla Mail can handle it to a certain extent, but I'd prefer to stick with mail app.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Word will still allow Arabic input and display Arabic documents correctly, but just will not be localized? If that's the only problem it's not a huge one.

Interestingly enough, in the last update of Messenger the Arabic names in my contact list now display correctly, and I can even read Arabic messages properly, provided that the Arabic fonts are installed.

Just for clarification, Apple supported Hebrew/Arabic long before Microsoft touched it, and did it better in my opinion. One of the things I like about the Arabic support in earlier versions of MacOS is that you could map the keys to their English equivalents, something Windows still won't let you do.

And it contiunes further:

[gbooker]

The register has posted another article on this saga. Here we read what some readers have said. One points out the fact that both the present and future cash flows must be calculated when looking at whether such a venture is possible. A few suggest that those complaining should just buy windows or get linux instead. I was rather shocked to see one mention that MS Office doesn't support Unicode! If this is true, then this is in no way Apple's fault. Nice try MS. My favorite was the mention of Koffice supporting it. If the open source community can do it, why can't you MS, or are you too busy making claims that open source software compromises security?

As usual with all comments, there are some good ones, and there are some bad ones.

An Alternative Plan...

[usr122122121]

Hey-
Yes, I was as quick as you guys to jump on microsoft about this... but then I thought about it a little bit. Here's a better plan:
1) Wait until RTL languages are supported natively in Mac OS X (MWNY).
2) THEN Email MBU @ microsoft and complain about lack of support.

Honestly, how can you complain that microsoft doesn't support languages that apple hasn't yet included in the OS? [OS X, not 9].

Re:dozens die in Isreal each week

[GutBomb]

yes, ALL of the arab musklims are bent on killing ALL of the isreili jews. yes, you have a good picture of reality right there buddy...

Re:Mmmmm.... Capitalism.... *drool*

[Aix]

Microsoft has already been convicted of quashing competition.

Microsoft has lost a case in civil court. This is not the same thing as being convicted. The term "conviction" only applies to criminal cases. The burden of proof is dramatically less in a civil case.

Competition is an essential tenet of capitalism. Hence microsoft is not an example of capitalism.

I am afraid you are mistaken (Your posting as an Anonymous Coward demonstrates that you already know that, of course) - capitalism is defined by individual rights for each to compete as they see fit. Pure capitalism is based on the idea of "laissez-faire," which is an extremely stark contrast to the actions the federal and state governments have been taking against Microsoft.

I have no love for Microsoft, but it is folly to say that they are somehow not capitalistic.

Re:Mmmmm.... Capitalism.... *drool*

[Aix]

So, the entire industry must revolve around what is profitable to Microsoft and Microsoft only?

Wait... Who is "the entire industry" here? Isn't the point that this small group of people want Microsoft to include Hebrew support in Office for Mac? What does that have to do with industry? Microsoft creates a product and you either buy it or you don't. If they felt like it was profitable to add this feature, they would. Otherwise, they won't. Pretty simple actually.

Vote with your pocketbook - don't buy MS stuff if it doesn't do something you think is valuable. Or write your own word processor for Mac with Hebrew support and give it away, or try to sell it and put your money where your mouth is about "profitability." In the meantime, Microsoft is going to continue fulfilling its purpose, which is to generate profit for its shareholders. I don't see where any other interests would come into their decisions.

And goodwill? What is that worth? A bunch of people want Microsoft to do something for them for free? And they threaten legal action otherwise, while talking about "goodwill" on the side?