Mac OS X version 10.3 'Panther' offers superior support for Arabic

The fourth major release in just three years, Panther offers breakthroughs in innovation, ease of use and reliability that won't be seen in other operating systems for years, if ever. Panther is a Network savvy operating Systems, Connecting to Macintosh, UNIX, Windows or simply a mixed environment is a snap, whether this network is the traditional wired one, or the ever growing wireless.

Easy to install and easy to learn, Panther has over 150 new innovative features including broad support for many additional languages including Arabic, so users don't have to purchase separate copies of the operating system if they are multilingual. They can mix and match character sets in the same document.

"A host of other advantages for users in this region include enhanced input methods for Arabic and better support in web browsing in Arabic", says Elias Abou-Rustom, Director of Marketing and Sales at Arab Business Machine Ltd (ABM). "Panther also offers improved support for Arabic fonts coming from a Windows operating system environment, as well as for bidirectional cursor movements in writing in Arabic and English, that is from right to left and from left to right when switching between writing English and Arabic together".

Another welcome feature for multilingual users in the region is better support for total repositioning of all items in applications from right to left when Arabic is the primary language. Elias Abou-Rustom cites an example, "When English is the primary language selected, the display in the iChat application has the names on the left hand side and the pictures on the right hand side. Now, when Arabic is the primary language, the names are displayed on the right hand side and the pictures on the left hand side".

Arabic users will also appreciate the improved support Panther offers in writing and viewing emails in Arabic, as well as in writing in the TextEdit application in Arabic. These two applications, odder seamless support for Arabic email, and documents coming from a Windows Machine.

"Panther offers better support for diacritics (i.e. accent mark, grave accent etc.) on the whole" adds Abou-Rustom , "you can now use them as they are meant to be used".