Syntux the geek

After partially-converting to Ubuntu (I’m still dual booting) and fiddling with MS alternatives, one of the first things that got me frustrated was the lack of immediate native Arabic language support in the word processor or the spreadsheet applications under the OpenOffice.org suit. Granted, the latter recognizes Arabic characters and renders right-to-left documents and spreadsheets of existing files, but what about creating new ones?

Native support means that not only is the user able to type in Arabic, which is straight-forward, but also to be able to type from right-to-left for the characters alignments are in tune. (Example: try to type in the text editor of Gmail in Arabic, you will be able to type but if you place a full-stop or any other ASCII character, it will revert back to left-to-right and only the “arabic” portions of the entered text will be written from right-to-left).

If you take a look at the toolbar, you’ll find that part of the hidden icons that enables you to toggle from left-to-right and vice versa, but they’re disabled. Same goes to the spreadsheet application where under Format -> Sheet -> Right-to-Left which is also disabled. Along with the presentation utility.

What you need to do is from each application, you go to Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Languages. From there make sure you enable CTL (Complex Text Language) by checking the box below, and then selecting one of the choices of Arabic in the middle section of the screen as shown in the screen capture.

Repeat action in each of the three applications.

Enjoy OpenOffice.org in Arabic…

Basem Aggad (http://dontcallmesheikh.blogspot.com)

Tags: arabic language support, spreadsheet applications, spreadsheet application, ascii character, hidden icons, arabic characters, gmail, basem, language settings, dual booting, text language, screen capture, word processor, alignments, spreadsheets, choices, blogspot, languages

The Zend Framework community has released another preview release adding new components into the core, increasing the number of nascent incubator components, and now providing the manual in 10 languages. Along with the 0.1.4 release comes a new end-user community wiki, development wiki, issue tracker, changeset browser, and other infrastructure changes to help the community track the progress and be involved in the project.

A special ?Thanks? goes out to all contributors for both the release and working through the infrastructure changes for the working project. We received a great number of contributions for code, documentation, translations, testing, feedback and help migrating from our old systems to the new.

The release can be downloaded from the Zend Framework Web Site.

Tags: infrastructure changes, zend framework, issue tracker, preview release, code documentation, special thanks, release 1, translations, languages