Today, I wanted to see how hard it would be to type Arabic on one of my computers. On my Windows XP desktop, I can't do it yet because I don't have the Windows CD. Apparently Apple decided OS X should install with Arabic support by default, and now I can switch quickly between US-English-QWERTY and Arabic-QWERTY.
Maha and Yasmine spent a bit of time this morning helping me properly type several Arabic words I know already - like Shukran (thanks), Qatar, and habeebety (female sweety).
There are a few things that don't work so well right now though - Apple decided to overload AppleKey + Space, so I can't use that to switch keyboard types. Switching between english and Arabic has some really weird properties. Backspace going to the right also bugged me at first. TextEdit just doesn't behave "right" with Arabic - sometimes artifacts are left after characters are deleted.
But all in all - chatting with my friends in Adium in Arabic works pretty well! Unicode is a good thing!
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