Israeli Government Suspends Microsoft Contracts

MartinB writes "According to The Register, in a double blow to Redmond, the Israeli government has both suspended all government contracts with Microsoft until at least the end of 2004, and Israeli Antitrust Authority director general Dror Strum has ruled that Microsoft is subject to US court limitations. At issue in part is Microsoft's refusal to support Hebrew in Mac versions of Office."

Comments

More than just convenience

[the man with the pla]

I am an Isreali citizen living in the United States. It's true that I as a professional do almost all of my work in English. But I am writing to say that being able to use my native hebrew means an awful lot to me and my family. It's not a matter of convenience, it touches on our religous and cultural beliefs. I am very glad to see the government take this action.

Re:More than just convenience

[BlueGecko]

On the one hand, I'm glad that packages such as OpenOffice are available, but you have got to realize that, if you really need to exchange a large number of Office documents, there is no real alternative except Office. I wish that weren't true, I try to minimize how much Office I use by using alternative products, and I wish OpenOffice the best of luck in the world and look forward to when I can use it in place of Office. However, for the moment, there are times--many of them--when I absolutely have no choice except to use Office, and the simple matter is that Microsoft has steadfastly refused not only to support Hebrew, but also Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese--really, any non-Latin language--in the Macintosh version of Word. That is wholly and entirely unacceptable, and I think that the Israeli government probably has a perfect valid point. Their reaction is perhaps a tad bit overkill, but I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.

Disclaimer: I am a US citizen whose native languages are American English and Southern and I am happy that way. :)

Re:More than just convenience

[Mark Gordon]

1) Israel is intended as a Jewish state, not an Ashkenazic state. Knowledge of Yiddish was never as universal among Jews as was Hebrew. Sephardim and Mizrachim typically don't know Yiddish beyond cognate Hebrew and Aramaic loan words. Hence, Israel standardized on Hebrew. Granted, most of the early Zionists were in the habit of ignoring rabbinical opinion.

2) Not all text editing is mundane. Prayer books and the like are typically printed, and someone has to write such things. Furthermore, Hebrew never completely died out as a language of biblical scholarship.

3) Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino: the major non-Hebrew vernacular languages used by Jews throughout history have traditionally been written from right to left and would necessitate the same bidirectional support that makes Hebrew so hard to support. It's only within the last hundred years or so that most Jews learned to read from left to right before learning to read from right to left.

4) Any rejection of Hebrew as a mundane language is post-biblical, and there doesn't seem to have been an especially strong rabbinical consensus on the matter, even if some rabbis held that opinion. Even independent of biblical scholarship, there was plenty of secular Hebrew literature in the middle ages, long after Hebrew ceased to be a vernacular, and long before modern Zionism revived vernacular Hebrew.

5) Yiddish was initially popular (at least among Askhenazim) because it was comprehensible (at least the spoken version) to the local gentile population. The vocabulary is mostly from Middle High German. Ladino is similarly derived from Spanish. Aramaic isn't an exclusively Jewish language at all, being originally a gentile vernacular (Syriac, an Aramaic dialect, still survives as a gentile vernacular in some villages), though it is used in some prayers, a few later parts of the Bible, and the Talmud, and it's still used in some rabbinical contexts. So non-Hebrew languages aren't necessarily embraced because they offer less sacred alternatives to Hebrew, nor are religious writings (even liturgy!) exclusively in Hebrew.

No compile Loc?

[soft_guy]

Under MacOS X, you can *sometimes* do a no-compile Localization, even if you are not the original developer.

I *know* that Office for Mac isn't exactly a well-behaved "normal" Mac app - heck, it isn't even a normal *Carbon* app. I did work at Microsoft as a Mac developer, so I am somewhat familar with the architecture of Office.

My suggestion is that they could look at the possibility of doing a no compile loc themselves, if they have Arabic support (very ironic!).

Both Arabic and Hebrew are hard to support because both require bidirectional (BiDi) text support. Meaning that text is layed out both left to right and right to left.

If your supporting international, French, Spanish are the easiest because you're still dealing with Roman character sets and one direction of layout. You just have to make sure you read the strings in from a resource someplace. Next hardest is Cyrilic languages like Greek or Russian. Next hardest is languages like Japanese where you need to have double byte characters or Unicode. The hardest is Arabic and Hebrew because of BiDi. People may often choose to do an Arabic version and not Hebrew because the market for Arabic is larger.

However, if you've put in BiDi support already and you're already internationalized, getting Hebrew to work shouldn't be insanely hard and could possibly be done by a third party, though there would probably be some bugs they couldn't fix (although they could report these back the MacBU and maybe work something out.)

Or they could use heavy handed "the customer is always right" tactics. Either way...

Partly

[Llywelyn]

Well, you're mostly right.

Implementing internationalization for hebrew is trivial in Cocoa-based apps. It is significantly more difficult for Carbon based apps (which MS Office likely is). Microsoft also has a *serious* NIH syndrome when it comes to anything Apple-based and seems to prefer to implement their own versions of everything rather than use Apple's built-in libraries, so even if they could use Apple's internationalization (which I should add is absolutely gorgeous for Hebrew), I have a sneaking suspicion they would want to implement and use their own.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[soft_guy]

The parent post is misleading. Apple does have Hebrew support in MacOS X and has been supporting Hebrew for many years. (And Arabic, too.)

Heck, they even demoed a Klingon version os MacOS X to really drive home how well they nailed international support in MacOS X.

The issue is Microsoft Office for Mac which is not an Apple product.

Here's my chance to ask!

[Erwos]

How the hell do you type nekudot (vowels) in OpenOffice 1.1? For the life of me, I've been unable to figure it out!

Otherwise, awesome work. Assuming you install the Hebrew fonts, Hebrew support is "out of the box" in RH9, and it even has the Culmus fonts!

-Erwos

You missed the really big story here

[fidros]

This statement came out only after the Israeli government effort to help organise and partly finanace a Sun, IBM & Israeli Open Source activists project to drive Hebrew and Arabic support to Open Office became a success with the results showing in version 1.1 - the first stable penOffice version that supports Bidi languages (Hebrew & Aarabic) in a close to decent way.

Forget what they say about the reasons for this move and look at the facts - this is a premeditated move and a damn smart one.

I just wish other givernment would be as smart.

Wrong direction, dudes

[shachart]

I'm an Israeli, and as such am more intimate with the details of the annoucement. What the Israeli government drives at here is neither a stab at Microsoft for lower prices, Hebrew for Macs, or anything of that sorts.

What it drives for is open standards. Unfortunately, our economy is not too strong right now, and a when a poor fellow buys a computer, she cannot afford to pay another $129 on Windows, $200 on Word, or $300 on Office, which accumulates to (almost) more money than the hardware itself. She can install Linux, and will be able to use OpenOffice, of course. But what about opening Hebrew word files? No luck there.

As part of a cross-government effort for open standards (see some government sites for documents), they also drive for open standards. If pushing MS to do so by not buying their software anymore will accomplish that, then I salute 'em... :)

As for Linux penetration here in Israel, I can say it is no lesser than the situation in the US or Europe. No Munich yet, but we're getting there...