Multilingual Wordprocessing Systems

WORDPROCESSING SYSTEMS ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________

- ARABTEX. Computer: Mac, PC, Sun, etc, etc. From: ziegler@azu.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Bernhard Ziegler) Organization: Informatik, Uni Stuttgart, Germany Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 16:05:55 GMT Newsgroups: comp.text.tex,soc.culture.afghanistan,soc.culture.arabic, Subject: ArabTeX Version 2.05

Prof. Klaus Lagally, of the Institut fuer Informatik der Universitaet Stuttgart, releases version 2.05 of ArabTeX, the set of (La-) TeX macros for typesetting Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Kurdish, Maghribi, Ottoman, Pashto, and Urdu. There is a new User Manual arabdoc.tex that serves for local printing and, being formatted in ArabTeX, at the same time as a test of your installation. A hard-copy version is available on request (send request to the author and enclose DM 10, outside Europe US$ 10, to cover printing and mailing expenses).

Version 2.05 contains a few minor changes: Vowel marks are aligned the same distance from the baseline, Arabic word emphasis is now possible via overlining, splitting of word groups across line boundaries may be prevented by enclosure within curly braces, etc.

This is Prof. Klaus Lagally's LaTeX extension for Arabic writing. It consists of three packages: the actual Arabtex package, the MetaFont package (for those interested), and the style files used by Arabtex. Most recent version: 2 (spring 1992). The latest version has better support for Farsi. It worked wonderfully for me, both on my Sparcstation and on my Mac (with OzTeX, also a free package).

ArabTeX Version 2: - it is compatible with Plain TeX - it uses a new font considered to look better - it generates most ligatures automatically - it also supports Farsi, Urdu, and Pashto.

Version 2 is nearly but not fully compatible with version 1. For details see the documentation.

ArabTeX is copyrighted. However you may use it freely for scientific, experimental and other strictly personal, noncommercial purposes if you give proper credit to the author. For other uses, apply for a license agreement. Donations are welcome.

ArabTeX may be redistributed on the same terms PROVIDED THAT you will inform the author, AND that you distribute the complete package including THIS file and any updates you know about, AND that you will forward any comments and suggestions to the author, AND that you will not charge more than a reasonable fee for data media and handling.

ArabTeX is an experimental system and supposed to change without prior notice. Whoever will use it does so at her/his own risk. We cannot take any responsibility on correct function or correct documentation. If you have any complaints or suggestions, please inform the author. We shall consider any reasonable suggestion but we will use our own judgment on changes, and our resources are limited.

Price: free. To get your local version up to date, retrieve the new style files as well as the CHANGES file via anonymous ftp:

ifi.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (129.69.211.1) directory: pub/arabtex

anonymous ftp: ymir.claremont.edu (134.173.4.23) (USA) tex.babel.arabic.macros-lagally and tex.babel.arabic.fonts-lagally

ifi.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (129.69.211.11) (Europe) pub/arabtex

nuri.inria.fr (128.93.1.26) (Europe) /TeX/tools/arabic

mail to FILESERV@SHSU.BITNET and include the lines: SENDME ArabTex.TEX SENDME ArabTex_MF SENDME ArabTex_STYLE in your mail to get the complete package.

The following ASCII files are part of it and invite to delve more deeply:

CHANGES: release history and known bugs (updated as necessary) INSTALL: available files, installation notes README: general information, see below arabtex.doc: a short manual arabtex.faq: answers to frequently asked questions (updated as necessary) guha.tex: a small TeX demo ligtable.tex: a LaTeX demo

(E)mail to: lagally@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de Prof. Klaus Lagally Institut fuer Informatik Universitaet Stuttgart Breitwiesenstrasse 20-22 W-7000 Stuttgart 80 GERMANY.

- ECOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS. Computer: PC and Mac For Language Fonts and Word-Processors for: Arabic, Bengali , English, Farsi, Hindi (Devanagari), Malyalam, Nepali (Extended Devanagari), Pashto, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu, etc. For catalog(ue), order forms and licence agreements please send $5 and self-addressed address label:

Contact: Ecological Linguistics, P.O. Box 15156, Washington, D.C., 20003 U.S.A.

- FAGR. Comments: (from soc.culture.arabic) Subject: FAGR ARABIC --ARABIZATION works with all english software for sale.

Works with Wordperfect(5.1),Lotus-123, SYMPHONY, DBASE,Turbo pascal, Prolog,turbo C++,Borland c++, and many English software packages.

Fagr package is address to the computer users involving in Arabic and Urdu Languages, and are classified in three main categories: FAGR is enhancement to the basic input/output(BIOS) and DOS function calls to allow the IBM PC and compatible to perform in Arabic.

A:) Provide an intelligent programmable aid for developments with High Level Languages, with a notable flexibility for adapting to the needs of the used languages. Continues (Escape Sequences) to control the operation form their bilingual developed programs.

B:) Fagr configuration facilities, can be adapted to match each common module, printer and fonts control.

C:) Offer an arabization tool which can take care of all the old files developed under any of the arabization systems as well as convert old files to any required arabization system.

The minimum system configuration requirements: An IBM personal computer or true compatible RAM k DOS Ver. 3.0 or higher Floppy disk Drive (5.25 or 3.5) Video adapters EGA, VGA,Mono

Package contents for 75.00+shipping: 1. Fagr User Manual. 2. Fagr Diskette 1/2(5.25")-- Fagr Diskette 2/2(5.25") or Fagr Diskette (3.5"). Contact: Ibrahim beshir 2001 w.michgan str #305 Milwaukee,Wi 53233 414-933-8299.

- GIST. Comments: (from soc.culture.indian) From: datta@unislc.uucp (Abhijit Datta) Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1992 20:56:35 GMT Subject: Re: Hindi word processor for PC Abhijit Datta ex C-DAC datta@unislc.slc.unisys.com or, uunet!unislc!datta (801-594-7623)

GIST (Gist based Intelligent Script Technology) is a hardware-cum- software product that might well serve your purpose more than what you are looking for. GIST helps in transliterating from & to English Roman, Devnagiri (Hindi), Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Oriya, Assameese, Perso- Arabic, Russian, Thai etc., there might be still further more.

This is the product from C-DAC ( Centre for Development of Advannced Computing, Pune ), and it conforms to the language, font standards. It also has printer drivers for most of the printers (dot, line, LP). The choice of the language comes on the EPROM & has a state-of-the art ASIC (brain) chip. Just for information, this is not the main product of C-DAC. They are in the world of Parallel Computing (Supercomputing

??).

Cost would approx. be Rs. 6000/- (in that range), I am not sure if it depends on the choice of scripts. It also has an word processor (some 'ms', like wordstar), also your language datas goes well with dBase, Lotus etc. Contact: GIST Group Co-ordinator/Executive Director Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Poona University Campus, Ganesh Khind Road, Pune 411 007, India. Tel.: 212-332461/79 ; Fax : 337551 email : bhatkar@parcom.ernet.in (Executive Director)

- INTEXT. Computer: PC Printers: Dot matrix (24 pin) Type of prog: Wordprocessor (shareware) Scripts: Arabic, Cyrllic, Farsi, Roman, Turkish, Urdu Limitations: Dated and awful, but people use it.

PC's: There must be quite a few of them around, but being a DOS- illiterate, I have no idea about them, apart from a shareware one (posted by Ala), and an announcement I saved from comp.text and soc.culture.arabic. Contact: ftp: vmd.cso.uiuc.edu name: ipfs passwd: mark command: quote acct iran command: binary command: get INTEXT.ZIP and you have the unzippable (PKUNZIP) version. OR:

Host isfs.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp (130.54.20.1) Location: /mirrors/simtel20.msdos/editor FILE rw-rw-r-- 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host gdr.bath.ac.uk (138.38.32.1) Location: /simtel-cdrom/msdos/editor FILE r-xr-xr-x 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host gatekeeper.dec.com (16.1.0.2) Location: /.2/micro/msdos/simtel20/editor FILE r--r--r-- 266030 Aug 20 1991 intext12.zip

Host ftp.uu.net (137.39.1.9) Location: /systems/ibmpc/msdos/simtel20/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Aug 21 1991 intext12.zip

Host athene.uni-paderborn.de (131.234.2.32) Location: /pcsoft/msdos/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Nov 3 1991 intext12.zip

Host pinus.slu.se (130.238.98.11) Location: /msdos.nfs.sunet.se/mirrors/msdos/editor FILE r-----r-- 266030 Aug 23 1991 intext12.zip

Host nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100) Location: /pub/msdos/editors/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Feb 6 1992 intext12.zip Location: /pub/msdos/SIMTEL20-mirror/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Feb 6 1992 intext12.zip

Host nic.switch.ch (130.59.1.40) Location: /mirror/msdos/editor FILE rw-rw-r-- 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host plaza.aarnet.edu.au (139.130.4.6) Location: /micros/pc/simtel-20/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip Location: /micros/pc/oak/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host rigel.acs.oakland.edu (141.210.10.117) Location: /pub/msdos/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (129.206.100.126) Location: /pub/msdos/simtel/editor FILE r--r--r-- 266112 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host swdsrv.edvz.univie.ac.at (131.130.1.4) Location: /pc/dos/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host tupac-amaru.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (137.226.112.31) Location: /pub/rz.archiv/simtel/msdos/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Sep 4 1991 intext12.zip

Host wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) Location: /mirrors/msdos/editor FILE rw-r--r-- 266030 Aug 22 1991 intext12.zip

Host askhp.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de (192.67.194.33) Location: /pub/msdos/demos FILE rw-r--r-- 416610 Feb 3 1992 intext.arc FILE rw-r--r-- 6007 Feb 3 1992 intext.txt

- AL KAATIB. MAC: Al-Kaatib is a right-to-left editor and comes with an Arabic font, in any case bitmaps. Is supposed to run under MultiFinder. You type your text in AlKaatib, and then copy and paste it into your favorite application (MacWrite, MS-Word, Excel etc.). Personally, I've used version 1.0 from an illegal copy back in 1986 for a while, but did not really like the concept, so I never bought it. According to recent news, the Mac line is no longer supported, but just the MS-DOS line.

Price: $199.00 retail; Alkaatib $199.00 retail; Alkaatib Laser Font (PostScript) $299.00 retail; Tawfiq Laser Font Family (postScript) $199.00 retail; Ferdosi Laser Font (Postscript) Contact: Eastern Language Systems 39 West 330 North Provo, UT 84601 1-801-377-4558.

- LINGUADOS AND LINGUASTAR. Computer: PC Printers: Dot matrix and laser Types of prog: LinguaDos is a wordprocessor add-on for Wordstar, and Wordperfect, allowing them to be used for multilingual purposes. Scripts: Arabic/Faris/Urdu, Bengali, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Gujerati, Gurumukhi, Roman. Contact: LinguaTech Bilingual Technology 19 College Parade Salubury Road London NW6 6RN U.K. Tel: 071 -625 5820 Fax: 071 -625 5842.

- LINGUIST'S SOFTWARE. Computer: Mac, PC, and others Printers: Laser Types of prog: LinguaDos is a wordprocessor add-on for Wordstar, and Wordperfect, allowing them to be used for multilingual purposes. Scripts: Arabic. They also supply various other fonts and wordporcessors). Contact: Linguist's Software P.O. Box 580 Edmonds, WA USA 98020-0580 Tel: 0101 - 206 775 1130 Fax: 0101 - 206 771 5911 OR: Apple Centres throughout U.K. and U.S.

- MICROSOFT WINDOWS 3.1- with Arabic Language Support. Developed by Microsoft Corporation, the Microsoft Windows 3.1 product is available with fully integrated Arabic language support. Includes 4 Arabic TrueType fonts and supports both the full Traditional Arabic character complement with 2 and 3 letter ligatures and the reduced or Simplified Arabic character set. Converts text files from Arabic DOS for use with Arabic Windows. Control panel allows setting of optional ligature selection and Arabic or Hindi digit selection. Windows Write is modified for bilingual Arabic and English word processing. Windows Paint provides full Arabic support for creating illustrations with Arabic text or Arabic characters. Calendar includes both Hijri and Gregorian (Western) styles with choice of Arabic or Hindi numbers. Cardfile, Notepad and Recorder have full Arabic support. Calculator provides a choice of Arabic or Hindi digits.

Microsoft also offers MS-DOS 5.0 with Arabic language support. This operating system gives your application more room to work with. It leaves more conventional memory available so you can run large spreadsheet and database programs with Arabic support. Also offers on- line MS-DOS help from the command line; full screen text editor with pull down menus; undelete and unformat utilities; compatibility with Arabized MS-DOS display support for EGA, VGA and compatible adapters; compatibility with Arabized MS-DOS printer support for more than 50 popular printers. Contact: Glyph Systems, Inc. P.O. Box 134 Andover, MA 01810 USA Tel. (508) 470-1317 Fax 508-474-8087 Telex (via WUI) 6503791521.

- MULTI-LINGUAL-SCRIBE. Computer: PC Printers: laser and dot-matrix Type of prog: word processor Scripts: Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Bengali, Cpoptic, Cyrillic, Devanagri (for Hindi,Marathi,Sanskrit), Georgian, Gurmukhi (for Panjabi), Hebrew, Inuktitut, IPA, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Persian, Phoenician, Roman (including Vietnamese), Sinhalese, Syriac, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, Urgaritic. Comments: Can accomodate the widest range of languages of any PC program. Files can be imported into Pagemaker and Ventura. Huge range of languages. Urdu is not available in Nastaliq style. Contact: Gamma Productions 710 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 609 Santa Monica California 90401 USA Tel: 0101 213 394 8622 Tlx: 0101 510 600 8273 OR: UK Agents 2020 Technology 5 Glasshouse Walk London SE11 5ES Tel: 071 - 793 0005/6.

- NISUS. Computer: Mac Nothing as of yet, but they have announced that they will have an Arabic version in october, based on Nisus 3.06. Price will probably around $350, but maybe an academic rebate ala normal Nisus. Contact: Paragon (+44) 81 642 2255) or fax: (+44) 81 642 4621 (in Europe).

- PATRICK JOST'S SHAREWARE PERSIAN/ARABIC WP. Patrick Jost's shareware Persian/Arabic text processing capabilities. I have no idea about this, but he announced his package on soc.culture.arabic last year. Price: shareware, $15 (US-price). Contact: Patrick Jost 12228 Venice Boulevard #495 Los Angeles, CA 9006 jost@coyote.trw.com

- PIS, AIS. The interface systems by Apple for the Arabic script, AIS and PIS, are as far as I know only available through APDA (Apple Programmers Developers Association). You can find them on their CD-ROM's (latest version: 6.0.7). Companies like WinSoft can give you the interface system for an additional price, when you buy their products.

- RASHUMON (AMIGA SOFTWARE) Date: 8 Jul 93 22:27:31 GMT Organization: Tel-Aviv University Computation Center

Rashumon, the multi-lingual word-processor for the Amiga now supports Arabic. Mr. John Hajjer of L.C.P.S. worked on the new set of Arabic, Syriac and Farsi fonts and keymaps.

Contact harmony@ccsg.tau.ac.il (Haephrati Michael) via EMail or send questions and comments to: HarmonySoft - Creative Software for Creative People. 69 Jabotinsky st. Givatayim 53319 ISRAEL. Phone/Fax: +972-3-315- 967

- SURKHAB PUBLISHING. Computer: PC Printers: Laser Type of prog: Word processor with some DTP facilities. Scripts: Arabic, Persian, Roman, Urdu. Facilities: True nastaliq style for Urdu. Contact: Nufax Ltd., 495 Bath Road Brislington, Bristol BS4 3JU U.K. Tel: 0272 72404

- PARTEX. A package also known as ATEX, as far as I know by Terry Regier (regier@cogsci.berkeley.edu). The drawback is that it needs a filter before you call LaTeX, but the filter is relatively simple and easily adjustable. Also it uses Yannis Haralambous (France) fonts, and I don't know whether these are still available in the public domain. He used to mail them to interested people, and I have a copy, but I don't know whether I have any rights to distribute them (see below). It worked fine for me however. Price: free. Contact: anonymous ftp: ymir.claremont.edu (134.173.4.23) tex.babel.arabic.atex or icsi-ftp.berkeley.edu pub/ai/atex/atex.tar.Z

- SCHOLARTEX: A package by Yannis Haralambous (yannis@FRCITL81.BITNET) for Mac and MS- DOS, supposedly handling almost any language. Price: approx. $200 (institutes pay a higher price). Contact: Yannis Haralambous 101/11, rue Breughel 59650 Villeneuve d'Ascq France Tel. (33) 20.05.28.80 Fax (33) 20.91.05.64 Bitnet: yannis@frcitl81

- WINTEXT. Computer: Mac Wintext is a mixed left-to-right, right-to-left wordprocessor. It uses AIS (Arabic Interface System) or PIS (Persian InterfaceSystem), the Apple systems for use with the Arabic script (see below). I have been playing around with a demo-version and was quite impressed. However, I have heard rumours that it does not like large documents, but never seen real proof of this. The price was too steep for my intentional use (just personal correspondence). Price: 2200 FF (french francs), approx. $350-$400. (Last year's price). Contact: WinSoft 34 Boulevard de l'Esplanade 38000 Grenoble FRANCE tel: (33) 76875601

------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Tariq Hamid Internet: tariqh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk

Tariq Hamid Internet: tariqh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk Tariq Hamid Internet: tariqh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk Department of Computer Science JANET: tariqh@uk.ac.qmw.dcs Queen Mary & Westfield College Mile End Road Telephone: +44 71-975 5245 LONDON, E1 4NS, UK Fax: +44 81-980 6533