Mac Hebrew Soap Opera Continues 79
Dark Nexus writes "The Register has a response (actually FROM Microsoft this time) in the continuing soap opera surrounding support for Hebrew (and other right to left languages) in Microsoft products for the Mac."
Wow! (Score:4, Funny)
Microsoft's obvious anti-Semitism, demonstrated clearly by their refusal to support Hebrew in Mac Office products, belies an obvious similarity to the Nazi party.
In the interest of fairness, however, Office:Mac doesn't support Arabic, either.
Re:Wow! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Come on, moderators, pop on some funnies!
Re:Wow! (Score:1)
It IS just good business (Score:5, Funny)
I'm betting that there's a larger clientele than Hebrew out there. It's an artificial language, and is growing pretty fast, based on some stats (yes, yes, I know--lies, damned lies, and statistics).
Klingon. It's not widespread as Esperanto, but much hotter.
I bet the Cut/Copy/Paste commands in Klingonnase would be more proactive...like...
SLASH/CLONE/SMASH
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, Yiddish is based on High German. Ivrit (Modern Hebrew) is based on Hebrew. Also, Yiddish is traditionally spelled with Hebrew letters.
Re:It IS just good business (Score:5, Informative)
No, no. Yiddish is related only tangentially to Hebrew. Yiddish is, as you point out, related to German, but not closely enough for a German speaker to understand Yiddish or vice-versa. In fact, Yiddish is just barely more closely related to High German than English is.
Yiddish first appeared around the 10th century in what is now southwestern Germany. At the time it was a dialect of German that included a large number of Hebrew words. Later, as the European Jews moved east, the language picked up some Slavic influences. In the 19th century, some English words and constructions began to enter the language as Jews from Europe and the Baltic immigrated to the US. Since World War II, of course, Yiddish has changed significantly, since there are so few Jews left in Germany, Poland, and what used to be Czechoslovakia.
Modern Yiddish is written from right to left in a modified Hebrew alphabet, making it utterly incomprehensible to people who speak only German. And, presumably, vice versa.
Modern Hebrew, the language spoken in Israel, is, again, only distantly related to Yiddish. Yiddish borrowed a good deal of vocabulary from Hebrew, but the pronounciation is influenced by Slavic languages, and the grammar is a mixture of High German and English. A Hebrew speaker might be able to pick out the occasional word of Yiddish, in writing, but almost certainly not in speech.
I'm afraid your suggestion was completely wrong.
(What I'm really curious about, though, is how many anti-Semitic trolls this post is going to inspire.)
Re:It IS just good business (Score:1)
My German teacher in high school claimed that she could pick out bits and pieces of Yiddish and frequently get the gist of what someone is saying. Perhaps it helps that where she was born in Germany is now in Czecholovakia, so her native dialect (she of course does a perfect hochdeutsch now) has the slavic influence. But I join in the collective eye rolling that someone would claim that Yiddish and Hebrew are related. Borrowing writing systems is common and does not mean that the languages are at all related.
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2)
Yup. My girlfriend is Vietnamese. Vietnamese, unlike all the other east Asian languages, uses the Roman alphabet, just like English. (Well, with the addition of a metric assload of diacriticals to designate tones and whatnot.) But English and Vietnamese are about as unrelated as two languages can be.
Similarly, the Cyrillic alphabet includes characters from the Greek alphabet, but that doesn't mean Russian is particularly closely related to Greek.
But of course the best example is Japanese and Chinese. A long time ago the Chinese ideograms made their way across the China Sea to Japan, where they became part of the Japanese language. In most cases-- or so I remember from my college Japanese courses-- the ideograms carry the same or similar meanings in both languages, but the Japanese have their own pronunciations for them, and of course the grammar and syntax of the languages are totally different. Even the basic semantics of the languages are different; the Chinese languages are tonal, where the pitch of a syllable carries meaning. Japanese doesn't convey meaning with pitch, even though they share the same basic set of ideograms.
Languages are cool.
Re:It IS just good business (Score:1)
And besides, going off on a tangent about how languages are related is a healthy sign, shows curiosity and an interest in wanting to understand things for its own sake --
But if any of this addresses the most flagrant abuse of the human ractiocinative apparatus in the Parent post, it showed up way below my current threshold, which I somehow doubt.
Sorry for not scrambling to get the Exact Wording -- feel free to interject. But wasn't the guy's basic argument about Microsoft Office's lack of right-to-left Hebrew support for the Mac OS X . . . wasn't it that you could use German, which is a lot like Yiddish, which is related to Hebrew?
Edifying speculations ensue. I will just add that my father told me that he was once sight-seeing at wherever the place is you can see the Hagia Sophia from across the water in Istambul. He ran into another sightseer, a European, and reports thst the two gentleman conversed for about fifteen minutes before either of them realized that my father was speaking Yiddish and the other fellow was speaking a sort of Bavarian dialect of Plattedeutsch (whichever one is the opposite of Hochdeutsch.)
But that might be to be expected, since the conversation had very little to do with Jewish religious practice, which is where the lion's share of the Hebrew vocabulary enters into the basically Low Germanic syntax and grammer of Yiddish.
No, what amazed me about This Dude's argument was . . .
Since Hebrew and Yiddish, whatever their structural kinship, share an Alphabet and are both written Right to Left, HOW DOES SUBSTITUTING YIDDISH FOR HEBREW SOLVE THE MICROSOFT-MAC OS OFFICE LACK OF SUPPORT FOR HEBREW RIGHT-TO-LEFT WORDPROCESSING?
Oh, yeah, it doesn't.
Om Shalom,.
Reshrabbi {: )}=
Re:It IS just good business (Score:3, Funny)
You have good knowledge of UNIX and a girlfriend. Not many people can say that.
Luckily, I can! And I can speak a little Klingon!
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2)
P.S.: Don't mind the ACs (tokhe straav) who have no honor and no name in a true Klingon's eyes!
Reminds me of the 20 Comments of Klingon Programmers [york.ac.uk] that circulate. Maybe that's what MS needs to fix their problems.
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2)
To the tokhe straav, I say: Hab soSlI' quch!
Qapla' jup!
Chuckles while shaking head... (Score:1)
I'm not sure whether I should laugh, or cry.
Probably both...
-Ster
Re:Chuckles while shaking head... (Score:2)
Like all good things in life!
But no, we don't dress up like Klingons or whisper kinky klingon phrases when nekked. We *very* far from being that nerdy.
Re:It IS just good business (Score:1)
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2)
I should have said that Microsoft's MBU head indicated that Apple had not made the Hebrew implementation a "top-tier" implementation, so they would not either.
Again, it's good business sense not to go out of your way to support something that the OS would not handle. That's also a good tech decision--OS X is not OS 9, and trying to hack it will make a bad time for everyone. I'm pleased at the logic of MS's response, since this IS Microsoft we're talking about here--a company that is rarely slowed by most kinds of coding ethics. The MBU is a notable exception to this, I think.
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2)
Re:It IS just good business (Score:1)
Re:It IS just good business (Score:2)
Re:It IS just good business (Score:1)
Re:Microsoft at it again (Score:1)
Re:Microsoft at it again (Score:4, Informative)
According to rumor, Hebrew support will be included in Jaguar, the next major version of OS X. Support for scripts other than basic left-to-right was pretty much absent from 10.0 and 10.1, making Hebrew or Arabic localization impossible. With Jaguar, we expect to get expanded support for right-to-left scripts and input methods, opening up Hebrew, Arabic, and Arabic-like languages.
Re:Microsoft at it again (Score:1)
Re:Microsoft at it again (Score:2)
It is incorrect to refer to Israelis as Israelites.
Israelite refers to a person of a certian religion/ethnic group in the bible and biblical Middle East. Israeli refers to a citizen of modern Israel and does not always imply Jewish though most of the time it does.
</rant>
Re:Microsoft at it again (Score:1)
Re: I'm a Computer Engineer. I'm not an English (Score:1)
No rant intended, just food for thought...
Re:Microsoft at it again (Score:3, Informative)
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It's not correct to say that Apple is finishing Hebrew support because Microsoft didn't do it themselves. Apple's been doing support for Hebrew and other non-Roman languages since the WorldScript days in '91 or so. It's just taking a little time to add it to OS X.
Re: (Score:1)
Mmmmm.... Capitalism.... *drool* (Score:2)
The point is, there is no way Microsoft wouldn't include the support if it was profitable , almost by definition.
Re:Mmmmm.... Capitalism.... *drool* (Score:2)
Microsoft has lost a case in civil court. This is not the same thing as being convicted. The term "conviction" only applies to criminal cases. The burden of proof is dramatically less in a civil case.
Competition is an essential tenet of capitalism. Hence microsoft is not an example of capitalism.
I am afraid you are mistaken (Your posting as an Anonymous Coward demonstrates that you already know that, of course) - capitalism is defined by individual rights for each to compete as they see fit. Pure capitalism is based on the idea of "laissez-faire," which is an extremely stark contrast to the actions the federal and state governments have been taking against Microsoft.
I have no love for Microsoft, but it is folly to say that they are somehow not capitalistic.
Re:Mmmmm.... Capitalism.... *drool* (Score:2)
Wait... Who is "the entire industry" here? Isn't the point that this small group of people want Microsoft to include Hebrew support in Office for Mac? What does that have to do with industry? Microsoft creates a product and you either buy it or you don't. If they felt like it was profitable to add this feature, they would. Otherwise, they won't. Pretty simple actually.
Vote with your pocketbook - don't buy MS stuff if it doesn't do something you think is valuable. Or write your own word processor for Mac with Hebrew support and give it away, or try to sell it and put your money where your mouth is about "profitability." In the meantime, Microsoft is going to continue fulfilling its purpose, which is to generate profit for its shareholders. I don't see where any other interests would come into their decisions.
And goodwill? What is that worth? A bunch of people want Microsoft to do something for them for free? And they threaten legal action otherwise, while talking about "goodwill" on the side?
of note (Score:2)
MS and Intel would rather have the Israelimarket to themselves.
They probably will.
--
I love conspiracies
Re:of note (Score:2)
Two new languages would have to be supported (Score:1)
There are a lot of zealots that tend to look for the slightest excuse to accuse others of raging anti-semitism or pro-semitism [?]. Supporting one but not the other of these languages would provide that excuse.
In the current global political climate, being seen to be fair sometimes means that both sides have to go without.
Check out the ACTUAL numbers...... (Score:2, Insightful)
Or incredibly, Arabic and Korean too.
300 million people speak Portuguese
200 million people speak Arabic
65 million speak Korean
8 million speak Zulu
Only 3 million speak Hebrew, and my guess is most also speak English. As for the Russians, most who are wealthy enough to afford a computer speak/read English or another more common language. So I think it is simple economics. Sure Israel will pay to add Hebrew support, but will they pay for the ongoing costs in supporting the language for years to come?
So all and all this is NOT a case of unfair competition (which I would prefer it to be, cause I don't like the beast that is Microsoft), nor is it a case of Anti-Semetism (which I am sure people are lead to belive it might be), it is a case of economics, plain and simple. Selling 2000 copies of some software program doesn't outway the issue of ongoing support over years and years. I am sure if Israel would agree to pay for the support forever then Microsoft/Apple would relent and take them up on the offer.
Re:Check out the ACTUAL numbers...... (Score:2)
Re:Check out the ACTUAL numbers...... (Score:1)
Re:Check out the ACTUAL numbers...... (Score:2)
There is a Office in hebrew, and it's very good.
The problem that there are very few Macs in Israel, so I would imagine that the market-share of Mac-owners that needs hebrew support is very few, especially considerring that those *would* likely to know english.
Apps that will support Arabic/Hebrew in 10.2? (Score:2, Informative)
Correct me if I'm wrong, Word will still allow Arabic input and display Arabic documents correctly, but just will not be localized? If that's the only problem it's not a huge one.
Interestingly enough, in the last update of Messenger the Arabic names in my contact list now display correctly, and I can even read Arabic messages properly, provided that the Arabic fonts are installed.
Just for clarification, Apple supported Hebrew/Arabic long before Microsoft touched it, and did it better in my opinion. One of the things I like about the Arabic support in earlier versions of MacOS is that you could map the keys to their English equivalents, something Windows still won't let you do.
Re:dozens die in Isreal each week (Score:2)
And it contiunes further: (Score:2)
As usual with all comments, there are some good ones, and there are some bad ones.
An Alternative Plan... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I was as quick as you guys to jump on microsoft about this... but then I thought about it a little bit. Here's a better plan:
1) Wait until RTL languages are supported natively in Mac OS X (MWNY).
2) THEN Email MBU @ microsoft and complain about lack of support.
Honestly, how can you complain that microsoft doesn't support languages that apple hasn't yet included in the OS? [OS X, not 9].