It's Official: No Right-to-Left Text in Mac Word 12
11/18/2005 00:36 Filed in: Technology
And why I've dumped Word for Mellel...
First, my source for this news is Rick Schaut himself (whom I respect very much), a software design engineer in Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MacBU). On October 28, I emailed him asking if right-to-left (RTL from this point on) text was finally going to be available for Mac Word version 12, presumably to be released sometime in 2006. This was his reply:
I'm really ticked about this. In spite of the fact that Word for the Mac has been around longer, the Windows version of Word already has this ability in its current version. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I can honestly say for the first time WinWord has a leg up on MacWord. There I said it. Let lightning strike where it may.
For me this means that using Mac Word for writing a dissertation in the field of biblical studies is out of the question. I'll explain why in a minute. But it's not just folks in biblical academia who are left out in the cold. Anyone needing to compose text from right to left--whether it's modern Hebrew or even Arabic--can't use Mac Word. Nor can anyone use it who works with any Ancient Near Eastern language, most all of which are RTL. Word for Windows has had this ability since the release of Office 2003.
Let me give you a taste of the problem. First, of all, if you want to compose text in Hebrew, you can forget it because Hebrew is a RTL language and text that flows in this direction is not supported by Mac Word. Further, Unicode text pasted into a Word document does not display Hebrew correctly either. There are a number of advantages to using Unicode fonts. Read the Accordance Unicode page for more information or Joe Weak's Unicode introduction for biblical scholars. However, the greatest advantage to me is that Unicode fonts are generally cross platform. I should be able to give a document containing Greek or Hebrew text to a person using a Mac or Windows without worrying whether or not he or she has the same Greek and Hebrew fonts which has always been an issue in the past.
But I can't use Mac Word for any of this. The problem is that text that should look like this:
comes out looking like this when I paste it into MS Word 2004 for the Mac:
It's utterly unusable. Therefore, I've had to find an alternative, which is Mellel. Overall, I like Mellel, especially v. 2. But I really have sour grapes about being forced to switch software after using Word, first in Windows and then on the Mac, for the last fourteen years.
I'm not going to erase Word from my Mac. Granted, I've got thousands of Word documents that I've created over the years. Even though there is a Word import feature in Mellel, it's not always 100%, especially with the more complex documents. But what it does mean is that new documents get created in Mellel from now on.
The good news is that Mellel is extremely solid and built from the ground up to be a word processor for academic use. It's ability to handle unicode fonts, switch on the fly to RTL text direction, integration with bibliographic software like Bookends, extremely powerful outlining and styles features, and, of course, long document support make it a scholar's dream, regardless of the exact field. See the full feature list for yourself.
If you haven't tried Mellel yet, I encourage you to download the demo. Regardless of your requirements in a word processor, you may find that Mellel actually suits most of your needs best. Plus, the developers at RedleX, the makers of Mellel, are extremely accessible through their forums, and open to new feature suggestions. In fact, they ask for them. That's better than anything I've ever received from the other guys...
Above: Mellel 2.01 in all it's glory.
First, my source for this news is Rick Schaut himself (whom I respect very much), a software design engineer in Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MacBU). On October 28, I emailed him asking if right-to-left (RTL from this point on) text was finally going to be available for Mac Word version 12, presumably to be released sometime in 2006. This was his reply:
At present, it doesn't look as though right-to-left text rendering will be in the next release of Mac Office. The reasons are somewhat complicated to explain, but they stem from differences between Windows and the Macintosh with respect to low-level APIs that provide context-based glyph substitution and the ability to get glyph-based (as opposed to character-based) measurements. At present, the only way we can do RTL in Mac Word would break the line-layout compatibility between Mac Word and Win Word.
I'm really ticked about this. In spite of the fact that Word for the Mac has been around longer, the Windows version of Word already has this ability in its current version. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I can honestly say for the first time WinWord has a leg up on MacWord. There I said it. Let lightning strike where it may.
For me this means that using Mac Word for writing a dissertation in the field of biblical studies is out of the question. I'll explain why in a minute. But it's not just folks in biblical academia who are left out in the cold. Anyone needing to compose text from right to left--whether it's modern Hebrew or even Arabic--can't use Mac Word. Nor can anyone use it who works with any Ancient Near Eastern language, most all of which are RTL. Word for Windows has had this ability since the release of Office 2003.
Let me give you a taste of the problem. First, of all, if you want to compose text in Hebrew, you can forget it because Hebrew is a RTL language and text that flows in this direction is not supported by Mac Word. Further, Unicode text pasted into a Word document does not display Hebrew correctly either. There are a number of advantages to using Unicode fonts. Read the Accordance Unicode page for more information or Joe Weak's Unicode introduction for biblical scholars. However, the greatest advantage to me is that Unicode fonts are generally cross platform. I should be able to give a document containing Greek or Hebrew text to a person using a Mac or Windows without worrying whether or not he or she has the same Greek and Hebrew fonts which has always been an issue in the past.
But I can't use Mac Word for any of this. The problem is that text that should look like this:
comes out looking like this when I paste it into MS Word 2004 for the Mac:
It's utterly unusable. Therefore, I've had to find an alternative, which is Mellel. Overall, I like Mellel, especially v. 2. But I really have sour grapes about being forced to switch software after using Word, first in Windows and then on the Mac, for the last fourteen years.
I'm not going to erase Word from my Mac. Granted, I've got thousands of Word documents that I've created over the years. Even though there is a Word import feature in Mellel, it's not always 100%, especially with the more complex documents. But what it does mean is that new documents get created in Mellel from now on.
The good news is that Mellel is extremely solid and built from the ground up to be a word processor for academic use. It's ability to handle unicode fonts, switch on the fly to RTL text direction, integration with bibliographic software like Bookends, extremely powerful outlining and styles features, and, of course, long document support make it a scholar's dream, regardless of the exact field. See the full feature list for yourself.
If you haven't tried Mellel yet, I encourage you to download the demo. Regardless of your requirements in a word processor, you may find that Mellel actually suits most of your needs best. Plus, the developers at RedleX, the makers of Mellel, are extremely accessible through their forums, and open to new feature suggestions. In fact, they ask for them. That's better than anything I've ever received from the other guys...
Above: Mellel 2.01 in all it's glory.