Al Kaatib: Arabic meets Windows

Thanks to Eastern Language Systems, Arabic wordprocessing on the PC has come of age. And it looks good on paper, too.

Recently one of the most exotic and attractive press releases we have seen arrived at Monitor offices; it was sent by a company called Eastern Language Systems in Utah. In it, the company announced a new package of fourteen Arabic typefaces (both text and headline) for its multilingual Arabic wordprocessing package, AlKaatib International. While this, the second volume of fonts, as well as Baasem, an additional collection of Islamic graphic art, are new, AlKaatib International has been available since 1987, as Nels Draper, president of ELS, later explained to us.

The aesthetics of Arabic
Draper says he first became enamoured of the Arabic language and its elegant calligraphic tradition while working as a missionary in Iran. He later completed a degree in Near Eastern Studies at Brigham Young University followed by a brief sojourn at the American University of Cairo. Since the late ’70s, he has dedicated himself to Arabic wordprocessing technology, first within the framework of a typesetting project for Persian at byu and later as a consultant for Xerox parc in connection with the innovative yet ill-fated star computer.
    In 1986, Draper’s first (now defunct) company introduced a Arabic wordprocessor for the Mac, also under the name AlKaatib. The second time around, Draper opted to develop for Windows, wanting not only the graphical presentation offered by that environment but also believing in the open nature of the PC. Because the PC is built by more than one manufacturer, he reasoned that there would be more people to peddle his software. He had a demo running under version one of Windows and began selling the package shortly thereafter for version two, making him something of a pioneer in the wilderness of Windows software development. His fortitude and endurance has finally paid off with the breakthrough of Windows 3.
    AlKaatib International is “not an Arabised English wordprocessor, but is bilingual from the bottom up,” Draper is quick to point out. The interface and user documentation is fully bilingual, and the program pays special attention to such details as full Arabic vowelling and automatic ligatures. “Because of the complexity of the writing system, the first generation of nongraphics based pcs were ineffective in displaying and printing Arabic. But now the more powerful pcs of today and a new generation of software development tools mean the technological base for Arabic wordprocessing has finally arrived,” says Draper.
     Joop Ossewaarde, of Arabia Ware, the Benelux distributor of AlKaatib International, specializes in multilingual software for the Mac and the pc, in particular Arabic software; he confirms there is growing market for it. Export-oriented companies in a country like Holland consider it strategically important to be able to correspond and supply documentation in Arabic. Often, says Ossewaarde, a company will employ a native speaker of an important export land. In addition, countless translators, translation companies, and municipal agencies need to be able to produce Arabic and/or multilingual texts. He points out that a minor disadvantage of the new Arabic edition of WordPerfect is that it has an English interface. For many North Africans, French or Dutch is their second language, not English. This is less of a drawback for people from the Middle East, but clearly not as elegant a solution as AlKaatib International’s fully Arabic interface.

And Berber
Ossewaarde speaks glowingly of the print quality possible with AlKaatib, saying “the combination of Adobe Type Manager [included with the package] and Windows is really ideal. Latin alphabet-based languages and Arabic can be effortlessly mixed at any font size.” In response to customer demand, Ossewaarde is also developing a Berber font, Tamazigh, for AlKaatib, which he displayed for us onscreen. The Berber languages, not always officially recognized and tolerated in the past, are spoken by approximately twelve million people in North Africa. They too will appreciate being able to wordprocess in their mother tongue.
    Back in Provo, Eastern Language Systems seems blithely unaware of political borders, as it has recently completed development of a document processor for Persian, Vazhe Negar, and is currently working on a Hebrew document processor called HaKotev. The languages of the Indian sub-continent are next, with packages for Urdu and Hindu on the drawing boards. Meanwhile, the company is pursuing a “vigorous development schedule” for its next release of AlKaatib International, with what Draper says is a “strong linguistic orientation.” He confirms that this includes development of an Arabic spellchecker.

Eastern Language Systems, 39 West 300 North, Provo, ut 84601, USA, Tel +1 801 377 4558, Fax +1 801 377 2200

Arabia Ware, Postbus 1273, 3500 BG Utrecht, The Netherlands, Tel +31 30 322093, Fax +31 30 343461