Arabic Support

[Guest]

Greetings,
I am going to develop a project targetting arabic speaking clients.

1. Is arabic support Device based.
a. My guess is it is to do with OS. Am i right?
b. I believe Windows CE 5.0 only supports Arabic in built. What needs
to be done with lower versions (say windows mobile server 2003). Is third
party tools the only option to enable arabic support.

2. Does anybody know of any handheld manufacturer that is supporting Windows
CE 5.0?

Thanks
Boris

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

1. Well, if you had a font on the device that contained the characters and
if you were willing to implement text editing with it (right-to-left, etc.),
you could support it *in your application*. However, it would be a very big
job and you'd have to be pretty confident of selling, I would think,
thousands of copies of your software, to make it worth your while
economically. Yes, you might also use some third-party support. Windows CE
5 has support for more complex scripting systems than the earlier versions,
also. I think your understanding is pretty good.

2. Not yet, not with Arabic in it, certainly (I rather doubt that PPC
vendors will be including any complex scripting support right away, either).
The next version of Pocket PC is still a ways off, anyway, and mass-market
devices really can't afford to be something other than Pocket PC devices...

Paul T.