Re: OpenOffice 2.0/ StarOffice 8.0

[Ossama Khayat <okhayat at yahoo dot com>]

--- Waleed Hosny <Waleed dot Hosny at Sun dot COM> wrote:
> Hi All,
> I would like to wish all of you a happy Eid vacation.

Hi, and Eid Mobarak,

> I am interested to 
> get some feeling about your evaluation of Arabic support in OO2.0/SO 8.0.
> Things like:
> 
> - Is it usable from the user interface point of view?

So far we don't have an Arabic build nor UI for OOo at least but hopefully soon
it will be ready. Previously in 1.1.x it had some problems like menus display
from LTR though the main items are RTL.
Anyway, we have to wait till the Arabized UI (Currently at 88% without
helpcontent) is available.

> - Is it easy for users to switch to OO/SO? or do users needs training to 
> switch to OO/SO?

A little training is needed I believe. I asked some 3 people to try it and they
had little problems like where to find commands compared to M$ Office.

> - Are you satisfied with the current Arabic support?

IMHO, the support is still not enough for the Arabic user, at least to make the
switch. That's for some reasons:
    1. We still have the problem of broken words under linux
    2. PDF export (even under windows) also produces broken words
    3. We lack a spell checker and thesaurus
    4. The list of countries is only 4

... that's what I recall for now.

> - What Arabic features do you like to see in next releases?

I guess fixing the above mentioned problems would be fine for now ;-)

> I would appreciate all your comments/experience.

One thing related to the translation strings. I would say 5% out of the string
(about 500) need to be revised. Comments would help the translator alot to
provide a better Arabized software.

thanks,
Ossama Khayat
OOo Arabic N/L Lead


		
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