LANGBOX-ARA
is an extension to the UNIX™ operating system Kernel, designed
specially to support the Arabic language. A virtual driver
is added to the kernel, processing on exceptional basis the
Arabic characters at the TTY I/O flow level. A special shell
and a variety of commands are added to complete the package.
After
the installation of LANGBOX-ARA on your system, Arabic
is supported (in addition to English), with keyboard mapping,
system messages, screen and display management, collating
sequences, and date and time routine services.
LANGBOX-ARA
will permit staff in your office to share and use existing
UNIX applications in Arabic with little or no adjustment.
With LangBox International's load and go transparency, a user
can obtain an English word processor, data base manager, spreadsheet
or any 8-bit clean application and use it immediately, without
any modification of the application, in Arabic. He/She can
even mix Arabic and English characters and text within the
same document, with a simple keystroke.
 For
the User
- Use
the best existing "English-only" applications
in Arabic with no modification.
- Dynamically
switch between Arabic and English.
- Enter
UNIX commands in Arabic or English.
- Receive
system messages in Arabic or English.
- Dynamically
select screen directionality.
- No
need to purchase specific or dedicated bilingual terminals.
 For
the Developer
- Develop
Arabic products and bilingual applications without bilingual
programmers.
- Move
existing "English-only" applications into the
Arabic world.
- Develop
applications that meet the highest Arabic standards.
 For
the Distributors and VARs
- Open
new markets with new products/systems that meet local requirements.
- Expand
your customer base with bilingual product offerings.
 For
the Manufacturers
- Enhance
your total offering to the Arabic markets.
- Address
international opportunities through our special LangBox
International cooperation program.
Here is some shell sessions under the LANGBOX-ARA environment.
The
following features are available on LANGBOX:
 Bilingual
keyboard: The keyboard mapping may be switched to
English or Arabic layout by a simple keystroke. Arabic
letters are indicated by keyboard
stickers.
 Character
codeset: The following character codesets are supported
under LANGBOX-ARA:
 Kernel
support of Input/Output processing.
Two
kinds of commands are added under the LANGBOX-ARA bilingual
environment
The LANGBOX-ARA shell :
LANGBOX-ARA
offers national shells allowing:
- The
keyboard mapping.
- The
setting of environment variable.
- The
context analysis.
- The
screen management and the display processing depending
on the language selected.
These
shells are: esh and eksh for English; ash
and aksh for Arabic. Also araexec forks a system
shell.
- The
bilingual LANGBOX-ARA and UNIX commands and utilities.
Those
commands and utilities are the following:
acharset, aload, amode, arabic, asmo449, combo, context,
dataproc, english, hindi, neutral, nocontext, nohindi,
wordproc, adisp, aind, axtract, axec, afps, asetup, amask.
Bilingual
UNIX-like:
aed, alp, avi, avedit, aa2ps…
These
commands return national (English or Arabic) state or
error messages depending on the shell selected.
 Bilingual
function libraries: The extended UNIX function libraries
are the following:
- C
library
- Arabization
library: This new function library is specially added
for internationalization of applications and string extraction.
All
terminal emulation windows based on X Window and its library
are supported. This includes xterm, SCOterm on Open Desktop
of SCO, shelltool and cmdtool on Open Window of Sun...etc.
LANGBOX-ARA
fully emulates a VT220 terminal and supports ISO
8859-6, ASMO 449 plus, and
ASMO 708.
Ported
to Interactive UNIX System V 3.2, SCO UNIX System V 3.2.4,
SCO XENIX 3.4.2, IBM AIX PS/2 1.2 and RISC System /6000
3.1 and 3.2, SUN OS 4.1.1 and SUN Solaris 2.3 to 2.6 (Sparc
and X86), SGI IRIX 5.2 to 6.3, CDC EP/IX 2.1.1,
Data General DG/UX 5.40, Intergraph CLIX 3.1, etc.
X
Window xterm and other windowed terminal emulators on these
systems are fully supported under a VT220 emulation.
All
equipment running any above mentioned version of UNIX. For
display devices and terminals, support is available for:
Wyse Model 60, Esprit Opus 3n1, HP 700/43, DEC VT320, D412+
Bull Questar 205 and 305.
For
printers, support is available for IBM proprinter II and
III, EPSON LQ, FUJITSU DL, Genicom 1040 and 4440, HP Deskjet
plus, HP laserjet plus, and Postscript.
On
PC's (80386/486), the EGA or VGA cards are supported with
the virtual screens. PC multiplexor board like BELL ICC,
SPECIALIX SI, COROLLARY 8/tc, COMPUTONE Intel Port II, DIGIBOARD
Digichanel C/CON-16, WYSE 995, FLICT AT 8/16 are also supported.
LANGBOX-ARA
consists of a core system supplied in binary machine
installable format on floppies, QIC tapes and CD-ROM, together
with documentation, and local keyboard
stickers.
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