Diwan partners with Openwave to create multilingual WAP browser

This will enable the Openwave browser to display all right-to-left languages including Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. As part of this agreement, Diwan will license its text engine to
Openwave for use in its version 5 and later mobile browsers.

The Diwan text engine handles Unicode text, the full Unicode reordering model, and has been designed to work within the memory and speed constraints of a small device.

Diwan and Openwave will cooperate to establish extensions to existing standards like WAP to allow for complete support of right-to-left content.

Adil Allawi, technical director of Diwan Software adds: "The mobile revolution is the next major leap in communications after the internet.

Openwave's cooperation with Diwan will be a major step forward in bring this revolution to Middle Eastern markets. We are working together to make it possible for all mobile phone users in the Middle East being able to access information and services as easily in their local language as they can now
in English. Because of lack of support for right-to-left text, the internet revolution took two years to come to the Middle East. It is Diwan's aim to work with leading-edge companies to bring new solutions to expanding markets so that the Middle East has parity with the rest of the world".

"Openwave is pleased to work with Diwan to add multilingual capabilities to our Mobile Browser," said Ric Mommer, senior manager for Openwave. "This added feature will help our OEM customers reach a much broader market with their handsets."