Hilmi Al-Kindy
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Posts posted by Hilmi Al-Kindy
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On 6/16/2020 at 8:14 PM, Patrick Connor said:
Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums
It is not fair to say we have decided not to undertake this work and simply have not said so, but that is an easy misapprehension to have given some of these threads. We also understand it must be frustrating for the software to look like it is suitable for your needs but in fact it is missing this vital functionality for that market segment. We try not to market to regions where sales are inappropriate, but social media and the internet make that very difficult to control.
We have said that we do absolutely want to add support for more complex text composition (as you know it is not as simple as RTL instead of LTR it is often mixed within a single sentence) and we know (and have admitted) that it will be some time before that is possible, mainly because the developers capable of this work are currently busy with other high priority features. Our company size (<100) does not restrict the employment process, it's just a matter of finding the right people. We would love to employ other experienced developers to speed up this important work to benefit the whole Affinity range.
No doubt someone will now rip that statement to pieces and hit me over the head with it, but it is written with good intentions of clarity because you seem to be making definitive statements that are not correct.
Thank you for clarifying, I apologize for my post if it has caused offense, I do understand that you are taking on a monumental task to create powerful software at an affordable price point. By the way, the fact that I have been using your products since 2008 tells you that I do have great respect for your products.
As to the guy who was asking why there isn't an application developed specifically for the Arabic community, once he finds an answer to that question he could probably also figure out why we are all considered third world economies and he can fix all our economic problems. To answer his question would involve delving in economic theory, geopolitics and good old fashioned righteous ranting. I believe all these are outside the scope of this forum.
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ADOBE and Microsoft fully support RTL, but Microsoft does not have a solid artwork or desktop publishing solution (publisher is basically abandonware now with no updates in ages) and Adobe's solution is expensive and subscription based which many people try to avoid. Apple has been supporting Arabic language with strong solid support since the 80s. In the 90's Quark was king of desktop publishing and it too had solid Arabic language support. So you are incorrect in assuming there are no Arabic language programs. The issue is specifically with Serif's failure to support this market.
2 hours ago, thomaso said:Your calculations make me wonder again:
How comes that there is no design software on the market from a company in the RTL world? In particular because they also will be aware about 420 million people and huge new market. I can't imagine none of them knows about software development. But then what may be the reason that not even 1 or 2 people start doing it, like Microsoft and Apple got started initially? Is it some political reason which makes it difficult or even impossible to code programs?
Just in case: I don't want to provoke or blame anyone (as it got assumed after I asked that question before) – I am just very interested to understand.
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Most likely the price point they have set for the software is too low to justify the hire of a programmer to add this functionality. Serif has always set their software on the value end of the pricing spectrum. I can't see any other explanation for why 12 years later they still can't support Arabic language. I don't know in real life how big the company is, but many companies that do business on the internet look like big companies but in reality are just a small team of 2 to 10 people sometimes working out of someones garage. Now I'm sure Serif is bigger than that, they have global distribution even back when products were sold in physical CD, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are big enough to hire 1 or 2 extra programmers.
But if you look according to a quick internet search, Arabic is spoken by roughly 420 million people in the world. I am an Arab, I know for a fact that most of the market here is for cheaper value software and as soon as a solid alternative to Adobe products is introduced, a huge new market segment will be open to them immediately. These days you don't even need a regional company to help you market, you just flood google ads with marketing your product. That is a lot of software licenses waiting to be sold.
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Don't hold your breath. I started talking to Serif about Arabic language support in 2008. They choose to ignore a market segment. This is just an opportunity for a competitor to pick up the slack and take over the entire market. They can't be bothered, they are not interested they have no plans to do it. so don't waste your time.
I might be wrong, but my impression is, the company has taken a conscious decision not to support RTL languages but just don't want to tell clients flat out that they are not interested in supporting RTL. I can not speculate as to the reasons, but had they really wanted to support Arabic or Hebrew it would have been done by now.
Fix RTL for Arabic, Persian and Hebrew languages
in Feedback for Affinity Designer V1 on Desktop
Posted · Edited by Hilmi Al-Kindy
Does your software support Arabic text (letters flow together according to predefined rules)?