Phil, Having worked at a company that had an Arabic contract a long tome ago in a galaxy far, far away, I can tell you that Arabic numbers are not "foreign" -- they have always read and printed their numbers left-to-right. Remember, they invented the concept of "zero".
The company I worked for at the time produced a 3270-workalike out of a microprocessor-based ASCII terminal (with 8-inch floppy drive, Zilog Z80 8-bit processor, 4K RAM) that supported both English mode and Arabic mode 3270 screens. The other interesting quality of Arabic printed words is that the shape of a character changes depending on the character that follows (to the left, that is). Most intriguing to see the text scrolling to the left and both changing direction for numbers and changing prior characters as new ones were displayed (on a slow, 2400-baud connection). I don't know Hebrew, but I would suppose it might have similar characteristics. Oh, and MVCIN first came with the 4300 processors, not 370. Peter -----Original Message----- From: Phil King [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 4:50 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Host text file in Arabic Peter Hunkeler wrote: >I never thought about and am not sure right-to-left is >supported on z/OS. Anyone care to enlighten me? I have no idea whether or not z/OS explicitly supports right-to-left languages. However there were 3270 displays that supported right-to-left languages -- the support is known as bi-directional or "BiDi". The help text in my IBM Personal Communications session indicates that it supports BiDi for Arabic and Hebrew code pages. Iirc the IBM 370 introduced the MVCIN (move character inverse) instruction to facilitate support for BiDi. So support for BiDi goes back a long way. I have a feeling that the original support provided on 3270 displays for right-to-left languages was not BiDi -- it was uni-directional and probably only required a very simple change to the wiring or electronics to completely reverse the display. This support had its limitations because a lot of Arabic and Hebrew text has imbedded foreign (for example English) words or numbers which are read left-to-right. _ This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
