---------------------- <> coordinated by Robert Kraft [24 July 1992 Draft, copyright Robert Kraft] [HUMANIST, IOUDAIOS, RELIGION, CONTENTS, etc., 24 July 1992] [Religious Studies News 7.4 (Sept 1992)] [CSSR Bulletin 21.3 (Sept 1992)] [codes: ... titles, ... emphasis, /

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... levels of headings.] ---------------------- This issue includes three contributed pieces that help describe how computers are affecting and will affect scholarship in various ways and fields. Charles Faulhaber's abstract of his longer article on textual criticism (from the perspective of Romance Languages) sets the tone by alerting us to issues (standardization of coding) and approaches ("hypertext") that are equally implicit to the other contributions: David Rensberger on maximizing the value of current IBM type technology, and Kevin Reinhart on using the Apple Macintosh for Arabic studies. Kevin Reinhart's hopes for UNICODE are very similar to, and not incompatible with, Charles Faulhaber's appeal for consistent and machine independent coding in line with the SGML/TEI proposals. Similarly, what David Rensberger and Kevin Reinhart are able to do in the multitasking environments of their hardware and software represent aspects of the "hypertext" strategy (ability to access and juxtapose various files and types of material and move items back and forth as desired) described by Charles Faulhaber. Previous issues of OFFLINE have touched upon these matters, but here you can see their relevance and value in more specific contexts. The final item is a rather brief and selective set of comments on matters of note deriving from the computer exhibitions organized by the editor for the July 1992 International Congress for the Study of Religion in Melbourne, Australia. Various scholars, vendors, institutions, and conference participants were generous in making time and products available to insure the success of that effort, and the results produced some new insights (or confirmed some old impressions) about "the state of the art" and its relevance for people like us. ----- Author's Abstract of "Textual Criticism in the 21st Century" by Charles Faulhaber (University of California at Berkeley; cbf@athena.berkeley.edu) in Romance Philology 45 (1991): 123-148 Since the Middle Ages, scholars have attempted to devise ways to study texts paradigmatically (i.e., by grouping all examples of a given element) through the use of concordances. The computer facilitated enormously the creation of concordances while at the same time creating, initially only as a byproduct, machine- readable texts. In turn these have been used for some years as the basis of printed critical editions; and special software has been developed to facilitate this process. Electronic texts can also form the basis for machine-readable critical editions. The most adequate mechanism for such critical editions is hypertext, or "non-sequential writing," which establishes links between related sections of a text, between a text and its sources, or between a text and the commentaries on it. Hypertext editions (= hypereditions) will require the use of consistent tagging of the various elements, such as the Standardized General Markup Language (SGML), as modified for literary and linguistic purposes by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), in order to be usable on many different computer systems. While a hyperedition will contain many of the same materials as a printed critical edition, their realization will be quite different. Thus instead of, or in addition to, an apparatus of variants, a hyperedition could link the critical text to the paleographical transcription of a given witness and, via that transcription, to a digitized facsimile of the witness. Along with the texts themselves, the hyperedition can also include software tools to manipulate and analyze the text. Creation and use of a hyperedition will require a sophisticated hypertext or hypermedia system as well as a set of peripherals and utilities (e.g., image and text scanners, an image processing program, SGML parser/encoder, text analysis program, collation program, stemma generator). Existing hypertext systems (Apple Hypercard, OWL Guide, ToolBook) do not as yet have the capabilities needed for hypereditions such as those here posited. Nevertheless, the scholarly community should begin to make ready for the advent of true hypereditions by preparing machine-readable ASCII transcriptions of primary source materials in conformance with the forthcoming TEI guidelines. ----- Guest Article: WHY A 386 COMPUTER? Glimpses into the IBM/DOS World, by David Rensberger (Interdenominational Theological Center, 671 Beckwith Street SW, Atlanta GA 30314; Internet 70730.2124@compuserve.com Last year I found myself in the unusual position of having enough money to buy a new personal computer. I want to share here some knowledge and observations gained from that experience, particularly concerning the type of IBM-compatible computer that may be most useful to scholars of religion. Some of the discussion will involve technical matters, but hopefully no more than is needed for intelligent shopping. Please note that I am not claiming that IBM-compatible machines are the only appropriate ones for our disciplines. Different needs and tastes demand different equipment, and this article will be most useful to those who are already satisfied that the IBM-compatible realm suits them best. Within that category, I will explain the differences among the various types of machine, and give some recommendations based on what it is possible to do with an 80386 computer.

Where the Chips Fall The heart of every computer is the central processing unit (CPU), and IBM-compatible computers are based on a family of CPU chips made by the Intel corporation. The history of these computers is largely the history of the improvement of those chips. The original IBM PC used the Intel 8088 chip. This chip can address up to one megabyte (MB) of memory, though in fact only 640 kilobytes (KB) are available for DOS and programs to use. It is the need to maintain compatibility with this hardware limitation that still restricts DOS programs to 640 KB. The 8088 performs internal operations and communicates with other components of the computer 8 bits at a time. Its otherwise identical relative, the 8086, handles these operations 16 bits at a time. The next step up was the 80286 chip (usually just called the 286), which IBM used in its AT models. It uses 16-bit data handling and runs at faster speeds than the earlier chips. But its most significant advance was its ability to run not only in the 8088's "real mode," but also in "protected mode." This makes it able to address up to 16 MB of memory, though the 640 KB DOS limitation remains. Protected mode also allows the running of two programs at the same time, in such a way that they are "protected" from interfering with each other. The 80386 chip (formally the 80386DX, though commonly referred to simply as the 386) went several steps further. For one thing, it performs internal operations and communicates with memory 32 bits at a time, though data transfers to other components still take place in 16-bit units. The 386 also operates at higher speeds than the 286. More importantly, the 386 can address up to 4 gigabytes (4,096 MB) of memory, and it is capable of "memory mapping," which means that it can swap areas of memory from one place to another. Finally, the 386 introduced a new "virtual 8086" mode, which means that it can simulate the operation of a number of separate 8086 computers at the same time. The 80386DX has a less expensive sibling called the 80386SX (or just 386SX), which has all the capabilities of the 386DX, but communicates with memory only 16 bits at a time. The most powerful of the Intel CPUs currently is the 80486DX (officially the i486). Running at faster speeds, it also incorporates a memory cache into the chip itself, which further accelerates performance. Moreover, whereas the earlier chips each had an optional companion coprocessor chip that could be used to speed up mathematical calculations, the 486 includes this coprocessor within itself. Intel also makes an 80486SX chip, which does not include the math coprocessor.

Advantages of 386-Class Computers >From the above discussion, it is clear that each advance in the CPU chip has brought new possibilities for using the computer. It is the potentialities of the 386 chip (both DX and SX) that I want to discuss here. Some of the advantages of the 386 have to do with sheer speed. Whereas the original 8088 ran at 4.77 megahertz, 386 computers are available at speeds up to 33 Mhz. Naturally the ability to handle data 32 bits at a time also makes operations faster. If all you ever do is word processing, you may not notice the improvement at once, since the main bottleneck is liable to be your own typing speed. However, word processing activities such as searching and changing are noticeably faster on a 386. The way the 386 chip handles memory gives it even more significant advantages. These center on its ability to "map" areas of physical memory onto other memory addresses. Memory management software running on a 386 computer can load memory- resident programs and even parts of DOS itself into memory above 640 KB, thus freeing more of the 640 KB area for application programs. Furthermore, earlier computers could make extra memory available to programs only with special and rather costly "expanded memory" hardware, which works by switching 16 KB "pages" of the memory on a special board into an address area in memory between 640 KB and 1 MB. On a 386, memory management software can create this memory by remapping some of the 2, 4, or 8 MB of "extended memory" that typically come with the computer. The 386 is also distinguished from earlier CPUs by its ability to run in "virtual 8086" mode, wherein it creates one or more temporary and artificial 8086 "computers" using the resources of the actual computer system. Each of these "virtual" 8086 computers can have its own 1 MB memory space, with up to 640 KB available for DOS and programs; and each operates as if it had sole and complete access to the computer's disk drives, video display, and other resources. With a master control program to prevent them from coming into conflict, each of the virtual machines can run its own separate program or programs, and they can all do so, from the user's point of view, simultaneously. It is this capacity, along with its memory handling strengths, that allows a 386 computer to do multitasking, as I will discuss below. Of course, the 486 chip has these same powers and more; so why not buy a 486 computer? The chief reason is the cost-benefit ratio. Though prices have dropped, a 486 system still costs at least several hundred dollars more than a comparably equipped 386. The main benefit of a 486 is the math coprocessor built into the chip. For scholars who use a computer mainly to manipulate texts, this coprocessor yields very little improvement in performance. Some types of research can benefit from it, however. A 486 may be of real value in doing large amounts of statistical analysis; or for archaeologists who use computer- aided drawing software, which must perform many mathematical calculations. In any case it is probably best to avoid the 486SX, which differs from the 486DX only in that it lacks the math coprocessor--the main reason for buying a 486 in the first place!

Where Was I?: Multitasking for Scholars One reason scholars in the humanities have been slow to take to computers may be that computers require you to do one thing at a time, and this is not how we are used to working. We are likely to have three or four books open at once, our fingers holding down various places while we try to scribble some notes before we forget them. Software doesn't work that way. Anyone who has used a computer for very long knows the experience of being deeply involved in a program and realizing that you need to use another program to find or process some data. You have to quit the first program, start up the second, and then return to the first one and get back to the point in your work that you had left. One solution to this is task switching. Task switching means having several programs loaded at once, and switching among them as necessary. Only one program at a time is actually running, while the others are suspended. Master programs such as Software Carousel or the shareware Back 'n' Forth can accomplish this. In fact, both DOS 5 and DR DOS 6 come with task switching utilities. This will work on almost any computer, not just a 386, requiring only enough expanded memory or a large enough hard drive to swap the suspended programs out of active memory. Task switching still allows only one program to run at a time. Multitasking, on the other hand, means having multiple programs actually in operation at the same time. All the programs may appear on the screen at once in reduced-size "windows"; or each program may take up the entire screen, and the user may switch among the programs to view them. In either case, one program is normally in the foreground, i.e., is the program with which the user is currently interacting, while the others are running in the background, generally meaning that they process more slowly. Currently there are two major options for multitasking under DOS, Microsoft Windows and Quarterdeck Office Systems' DESQview. Windows is more heavily advertised and therefore better known, but DESQview has actually been around longer. Both programs can perform multitasking on 286 computers, though Windows can multitask only programs written specifically for it. It is on 386 computers that they both truly shine, however. Here both can multitask a large number of programs at once, displaying multiple simultaneously running programs on the screen and allowing the user to switch rapidly among them and transfer data from one program to another. Windows' primary advantages are that programs written specifically for it use similar interfaces and can more readily incorporate one program's changing data into another. DESQview, on the other hand, works better with already existing programs and has a reputation for greater reliability. It is also a character-based environment (though it multitasks graphics programs perfectly well), whereas Windows operates in graphical mode. This means that Windows programs make more use of visual symbols, but also run more slowly (since they have to draw the screen dot by dot rather than displaying whole characters), and require more memory and more advanced hard drives and video hardware to work efficiently. I admit to a preference for DESQview; but any multitasking is better than none, and few people who have tried it ever want to go back. I generally have at least three or four programs running at the same time: some utilities (a DOS window, a calendar program, perhaps a file-management program); my word processor, Nota Bene; sometimes a Bible concordance program. Often I simply switch among them as needed, writing in Nota Bene and flipping to the concordance program when I need to check texts or word usage, and using DESQview's mark-and-transfer feature to move biblical references between the two programs. Frequently, though, I actually have more than one program processing at once. I may need to run a New Testament grammatical analysis with GramCord, which can take several minutes even on a fast 386. While it's running, I continue to write in Nota Bene. If I have a group of files to copy, the file manager can do that in the background while I work in some other program. One of the best uses of multitasking is background printing: I can have Nota Bene print a document while I check e- mail or use a grading program. If you have statistical or CAD programs that take awhile to complete their jobs, you can let them work in the background while you do something else. No more finger drumming while a program does its job; switch to another one and use it! It's even possible to have two copies of the same program open at once, though of course this must be done carefully to avoid accessing the same file in two different ways.

A Scholar's Computer If you are in the market for an IBM-compatible computer, a 386SX system should be considered the minimal, entry-level machine. This holds good whether you are looking for a desktop computer; or are economizing by getting a notebook to use in the library or the field, with ports for a full-size keyboard and monitor so that it can also be your office computer. The memory management and multitasking capabilities of 386 computers make them the IBM- compatible machines most appropriate for scholarly use at this time. Obviously I have not covered every buying consideration here. The point I would emphasize is that there are dramatic differences between 386 computers and earlier types, involving much more than mere speed. Just as researchers need to consult more than one book at a time, so they often need to use more than one computer program at a time. 80386 hardware and multitasking software now make IBM-compatible computers compatible with the way scholars work as well, and their prices have dropped to within reasonable range. There is no reason to stop short of a computer that will enable you to do what you need to do. ----- Guest Article: Arabic on the Macintosh: Overview and Review, by A. Kevin Reinhart (Dartmouth College; a.kevin.reinhart@dartmouth.edu) [A revised and updated version of this article will appear in the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin December 1992]

Introduction For Islamicists, surely the golden age of printing was the 19th century, when skilled European and occasionally Middle Eastern and Indian typsetters could compose in as many fonts as an author could write. One reads Goldziher's Die Zahiriten with envy, not only for the meticulous transliterated Arabic, and generous footnotes at the bottom of the page, but for the extensive Arabic quotations inserted into the text and notes. Since few of the Arabic texts he cited had been published, Goldziher provided his readers with his evidence in the original. Those were the days; but a new golden age for Islamicists may be upon us. With computers, not only footnotes on the page but transliteration and multiscript publishing are suddenly feasible and even simple. The items reviewed below take advantage of the flexibility of the Macintosh system to let even casual computer users produce Arabic. These programs make it possible for anyone easily to produce text in Islamic script (Arabic, Persian, Ottoman, Urdu etc.) in camera-ready form. To understand why those of us who use Macintoshes find them so helpful when we work with "exotic" languages, it is important to undestand something about how a key pressed on the keyboard gives the writer a "k" or some other symbol-block on the screen or printed page. On older computers, pressing a key generated a number inside the system -- the fourth from right, second row from the bottom produced the electronic equivalent of a 6B107 which is the American Standard Code for Information Interhcange (ASCII) value of "k." This number told the screen to display that one among the roughly 94 characters it knew how to draw on the screen. This same 6B107 in the file told the printing software and hardware to put a "k" on the page. The Macintosh simply added a couple of interpreters to the process so that the user can customize what happens after the key is pressed. (Modification of the "key assignment" is also possible on other systems.) The keyboard generates a number -- let's say 26 -- that the software interprets by looking at a font and at a keyboard map. We may have set the interpreter so that what we get is 6B107 and therefore "k", which it sends to the file and to the screen. But we may have changed the keyboard maps so that we get a C6198 which generates (with the right font) a "k-with-a-dot-under-it" or with a different font we may get E3227 which is the Arabic "kaaf" or a Persian "gaaf" and so forth. Another part of the Macintosh system has the "resources" to tell the machine to go from right-to-left or left-to-right by clicking on the screen or pushing a particular combination of keys. Another resource in the system tells the Mac whether to use the hijri (Muslim lunar) or the solar (standard western) calendar, to type dates month-day-year or day-month-year, and so on. Finally, the codes in the file can be used to invoke a naskii font, a kuufii font or any combination of size, weight (thickness) and kind of font. Now that the Macintosh has been taught to use Arabic, Arabic on the computer is much simpler than typing Arabic on a conventional typewriter. Anyone who has tried to learn Arabic touch-typing, has stumbled against the multiplicity of forms for the Arabic letter. The "jiim" for example has three forms on a typewriter, and one must learn to hit one of three keys, depending on whether the letter is final, independent or medial/initial (written Arabic jiims properly have four forms; the reduction to three forms is a 19th-century concession to problems of type design and setting). On the Mac, Arabic typing was radically simplified, by having only a single key for all forms of each letter. After you strike the key, the system software does a context analysis to determine which of the three forms of the jiim" is appropriate, and it inserts it. All of this makes the Mac flexible and customizable, provided you have the right system software. For those of us who use Arabic- language software, Apple provides an Arabic system, and there are Persian, Turkish and Urdu systems available as well. If you have a Mac, and want or need to work in Arabic, then you should order the Arabic system and go to work. (Henceforth I will discuss only Arabic, but everything said below holds good for all Arabic script languages. Various-language Macintosh systems are available from Apple dealers and developers, and from Apple itself.) To work in Arabic however, you not only need an Arabic system, you need Arabic-language software -- particularly word processing software. (I have found that you can fake Arabic using the Arabic system and, for example, the American version of Microsoft Word, but the performance is eccentric and frustrating, and should be used only in an emergency.) All of the items reviewed below, in some fashion or other, take advantage of these capacities to make possible the production of things useful to students of things Islamic.

History of Arabic on the Mac

Al-Kaatib (1.3 1987, Eastern Language Systems) was the first Arabic word processor for the Macintosh and its fate is instructive. The team that developed al-Kaatib produced a good interface with the first interpreter for the Arabic Mac. It is without doubt the unackknowledged source for many of the conventions of Mac Arabic design. This was an important breakthrough. They also designed quite handsome fonts, that were certainly better than anything used in Europe in the 19th century to print Arabic. The developer, Nels Draper, has told me that he put al-Kaatib on the market in an early form, hoping to use the cash flow from early sales to develop al-Kaatib into a sophisticated multi- lingual word processor. Sales, however, were a fraction of what he expected, and the reason was software piracy or, to call a spade a spade, theft. Copies of al-Kaatib were found all over the Middle East, Europe, and on the computers of many American Islamicists and Arabists. Yet few bothered to pay for the software, and as a result, everyone was hurt: Eastern Language Systems couldn't make enough to keep developing al-Kaatib, and so it never reached its potential. Consequently, the development of Arabic software was retarded by several years. Presently al- Kaatib is frozen in its 1987 state, with no certain future. Eastern Language Systems has instead turned to Windows on the IBM compatible systems, and has copy-protected al-Kaatib al-Duwwali, as they call it, with a dongle (an electronic device installed on the outside of the computer to insure that the program is not used illegally). Every Arabic-script Mac user owes a debt to Eastern Language Systems for their pioneering efforts in showing the value of the Mac for Arabic users. Alas, they also established definitively the untrustworthiness of the Macintosh Arabic language-using community.

The Future Languages other than European have always been an afterthought for computer developers, but in the global economy, indifference to other languages is no longer possible. A word processor designed to sell worldwide ought to be able to write, at the very least, Latin characters, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic. This is easier said than done. The new world order in computer systems is limited by the ASCII standards described above, which are awkward with eastern european languages, clumsy with Semitic languages, and hopeless for far eastern langauges. Recently, however, a number of computer companies have formed a consortium to develop something called "UNICODE," and there have also been similar efforts towards standardization led by the TEI (see Charles Faulhaber's abstract above).

UNICODE UNICODE is a single set of standard numerical "addresses" for all known language systems. Not only will there be a standard code for English and Arabic, but also for Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Armenian and even Akkadian. UNICODE will make communicating across computer systems easier, and will make fonts, systems and programs more comfortable with whatever language we choose to use. RLIN, the master bibliography data base, is planning to implement UNICODE within the next couple of years, and Apple too is planning to install UNICODE in about two years. Before the turn of the century, we may be able to search a national union catalog of Arabic books in the original script as well as in transliteration. (For a more detailed description of UNICODE, see "Notes from the AOS Computing Committee: What Comes after ASCII?" Newletter of the American Oriental Society no. 12 October 1991 pp. 7-9. For official descriptions see "UNICODE: A Technical Introduction." This and other documentation is available from UNICODE Consortium, Secretariat, c/o Metaphor Computer Systems, 1965 Charleston Road, Mountain View CA 94043.)

Arabic system 6.1 and system 7.0 The current Arabic system software for the Macintosh is numbered 6.1, and it appears to be a bit flakey. On the Macintoshes to which I have access, system 6.1 often crashes within programs when switching from one hard disk to another. Mr. Bustami Khir called my attention to an anomaly in the script manager: if one inserts a vowel within a ligature, the results just don't look right: Write kaaf then laam then alif and you get the proper ligature. If you try to mark the laam with a shaddah, then you get kaaf-laam and then the ordinary final alif as if it had been written after a ba' -- very ugly. At home I have an SE with 4 megabytes of memory. I keep both the Arabic and the usual American system on the hard disk, and with a program called BLESSER (public domain, available from most electronic bulletin boards) I switch between the Arabic and American operating systems. It is a little more complicated if you have a later machine that runs the new Apple system 7. System 7 will eventually be quite wonderful for exotic language users, with drop-in modules to switch from left to right and right to left, to customize sorting routines, to modify dating conventions etc. The current work- around is to install two resources from the unfinished World- Ready 7.0 into the system to provide an Arabic keyboard, right- to-left capabilities, and the Arabic calendar.

Arabic Wordprocessing Programs Presently I am aware of five Arabic word processing programs. Three are reviewed below, together with some other useful Arabic/Islamicist utilities. I have tested the items below with Arabic systems 6.07 and 6.1.

WinText: Multilingual Word Processing Program; Unisoft (Grenoble, France) distributed in the U.S. by Paradigm Software, PO Box 1607, Cambridge MA 02238 (phone 617-661-7979) . Cost $175; English documentation or Arabic. Version 2.5 tested (current version, 2.7). Unisoft, a French firm, seems to be in the forefront of language- independent software. WinText is a simple-to-use word processor. The Arabist can probably get it running right out of the box, if she or he has ever used Macwrite or any other Mac word processeor. It uses the ruler metaphor to set up the page display (single or double space, first line indent, for example) and is very straightforward, uncomplicated, and reasonably sized as well. It has a particularly good search and replace capability, better than many ordinary English langauge word processors. This is the wordprocessor, I would suggest, for those who will use Arabic mainly to write letters, take notes, prepare exams and exercises etc., in English or Arabic or any combination. It does not handle footnotes, and its formatting capabilities are modest, but if you have a small machine (SE or below) or see your computer as a utility rather than an a temptation to play, this might be the wordprocessor to use. The program is copy protected by a key disk, which allows you to make only two copies that can be opened without the use of the disk. (If, as I did, you lose a disk or a partition, then one of your copies is just gone). Menus in Arabic or English. (Version 2.7 has a footnoting capability.)

Al-Nashir al-Maktabi: Arabic Desktop Publishing Program; Diwan Science and Information Technology Ltd (London England) distributed in the U.S. by Paradigm Software [address above, under Wintext]; Version 4.1 tested. Cost $560. Documentation in Arabic or standard "Ready, Set, Go" documentation in English. Menus in English or Arabic. Al-Nashir is a desktop publishing program. It is at the other end of the spectrum from Wintext in terms of ease of use and intuitiveness. The metaphor on the screen is a layout artist's pasteup sheets, and with this program you can design sophisticated brochures, lay out and design a book (something many of us will be doing, as it is the only reasonable way to get an edited text into print in Arabic theses days), or publish a newspaper. In fact, one of the most widely-read international Arabic newspapers is typeset and published in London using al- Nashir. Graphics can be both imported and produced within al- Nashir, as can bi-lingual text, and if you are publishing a book, you can number, footnote, and display Arabic/Latin text pretty much as you wish. There is, however, no automatic footnote numbering routine. After reading the documentation, al-Nashir is opened, and the page design is established. Then text is either typed in our imported, and edited and modified in a layout that is pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG). Presses, Middle East Centers, and other institutions that produce high quality Arabic text will be the most likely customers for this powerful but demanding program. Copy protection is with a dongle, a device that attaches either between the keyboard and the computer, or to the SCSI(hard disk) port on the back of the computer. Menus in Arabic or English. (I would like to thank George Saliba and Bustami Khir, both heavy users of al-Nashir and both helpful guides to its strengths and weaknesses.)

AllScript, distributed only by Davka Corporation in Chicago (phone 312-465-40705). I was unable to test All-Script for myself, but I am told that though the program is quite slow, users of it are satisfied, on the whole. The reliability of the distributor has sometimes been questioned.

Nisus Arabic; Paragon Concepts Inc., 990 Highland Dr. St. 312, Solana Beach CA 92075 (tel 619-481-1477; fax 619 481 6154; applelink DO405). Cost $495, academic discounts available when purchasing three or more units. This is the only full-featured Arabic wordprocessor I have found. English-language Nisus is a competitor with, for example Microsoft Word and Fullwrite, and Nisus users are very loyal and sing its praises at every opportunity. It's distinctive features seem to be the extent to which it can be customized to do exactly the odd task that a particular user wants it to do, its extensive macro routines, and remarkable search and replace capabilities (find every word "Large" in the context of "burger" and change it to italics LARGE; find every dars and change to durisa). Amazingly, almost every one of these features is available in the Arabic/English version. It is such a pleasure to be able to do everything in Arabic that one regularly does in English, and there are some remarkable Arabic-specific features as well, such as searching by root (somewhat reliable), insertions of keshidas etc. Arabic Nisus also has many desktop publishing features, such as the ability to produce and import graphics and wrap text around them, the ability to produce gutters, and odd-even headers. One can develop one's own glossaries, so that "rhm" will produce "rahamahu Allah" etc. This program also has extensive indexing and table of contents capabilities, and can number pages, number lines, and display text in nearly every form. It may not be quite as technically adept as al-Nashir for desktop publishing, but it is far easier to use. It is without doubt the best Arabic wordprocessor on the market. Copy protection is by means of a dongle, but Nisus supports only Macintosh Classics and beyond. Those of you with Mac Pluses, SEs and the like are out of luck. This seems to be a mistake on the part of Nisus, as many academic users operate at the low end of the computer hardware spectrum. Nisus has in the works a compact (smaller and cheaper) version of Arabic Nisus, and various changes to the current version are also envisaged, including stylesheets, tables etc. (For reviews of Nisus' English version, which has more or less the same features as the Arabic/English version, see MacUser July 89 and February 1990). Nisus also produces Korean, Japanese and Hebrew versions.

Other Arabic-language tools

WinFile: Multilingual Database Program; version 1.1 Unisoft (Grenoble, France) distributed in the US by Paradigm Software [address above under WinText]. Cost $225; English documentation or Arabic. Version 1.0 tested (current version 1.1). Winfile is a flat (as opposed to relational) data base, although files can be linked together to approximate a relational data base. Judging from the documentation, it is designed for simple inventory or personal records. I have limited database experience, but this reminds me most of something like "Microsoft File," although the forms generation seems somewhat more flexible. You design a form -- name, deathdate, city of residence say -- and then enter the data within the fields established. Individual cards are linked together, and data can be compiled from all the cards by field. It seems to work well, though I have not tested it extensively. It would be quite useful for someone doing extensive biographical or bibliographical work, in which the sorting was most usefully done in Arabic-order. It works bi- lingually, and is reasonably easy to understand.

ME Times (Middle Eastern Language transliteration font); Paradigm Software [address above under WinText]. Cost $70; site licences available. English documentation. Developed by two graduate students in things Islamic partly as a service to the Islamic studies community, this superb set of Islamicate-language transliteration characters has hardly repaid its creators for their effort. It is found all over the world, but very very few users have bothered to pay for the fonts they have taken. I was shocked to see that a prominent orientalist serial produced in the Middle East is typeset with METimes, a fact unacknowledged and of course unpaid-for. With new keyboard assignment software, METimes remains an excellent vehicle for producing word-processed documents with transliterated characters. With some kerns and ligatures, it could be a fine type-setting language. The developers have given up on it, however, without producing either an Adobe type-1 or TrueType version (the most current types of fontware) because of the discouraging theft of their product. Once more, the piracy of software has hurt the development of tools specific to our rather small field.

Dragoman; a utility to convert non-standard "al-Kaatib" files into Macintosh standard Arabic files for use with other word processors. Free with purchase of other software from Paradigm software. It is a bit flakey and seems not to convert all Kaatib files, but its a very useful little program if you used al-Kaatib extensively before there was anything else. $40. It is worth mentioning that Paradigm software which distributes the various Middle East-language software packages seem to be very helpful and knowledgable. A user may very well need technical advice or assistance at one point or another with this software, and it is good to buy it from a firm that can help their customers to operate it successfully.

Hijri Dates; $5 from Computing Services, 6028 Kiewit Computation Center, Dartmouth College. A small utility to convert from hijri to common era dates and vice versa. Currently works on all Latin character systems; it is being implemented for the Arabic system as well.

Alt Keyboards/ME Alt Keyboards; a keyboard mapping utility designed for use with METimes. With it, the METimes font can be invoked for transliterating Arabic, Persian Turkish or generic Middle Eastern. Please send a disk, a self-addressed stamped envelope, a photocopy of your purchase receipt for METimes, and $15 (payable to Dartmouth College) to A. Kevin Reinhart, 6036 Thornton Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755-3592.

The Future Those Dutch or Egyptian typesetters who delighted in setting text arcaena are gone, but thanks to the computer we are beginning to be as flexible in the production of books as we were before the age of type. With the computer, we can hope to see an efflouresence of textual editions, Islamic-language databases, and other aids that will revolutionize our study and our presentation of our findings. Musings from Melbourne, by the editor My main goals for the computer exhibitions at the Melbourne conference were (1) to have available as many relevant products as I could manage for the two main platforms at use in Australia (Mac and IBM/DOS); (2) to focus some attention on the value and uses of CD-ROM technology; and (3) to emphasize the importance of getting connected to the electronic networks (primarily the Internet), illustrating how they can be used to advantage. Thanks to the assistance of such local contacts in Melbourne as Geoff Jenkins and John Burke in the department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, Ailsa MacKenna, Anne Williamson and Peter Brennan in Information Technology Services at the University, and James Tutton of IBM Australia, not to mention those knowledgeable conference participants who helped install software and solved some problems on the spot, everything came together pretty much as hoped. I was able to bring along the recently published Humanities Computing Yearbook for 1989-90 (ed. Ian Lancashire; Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), for general information, and various information flyers, especially from Hermeneutika (PO Box 98563, Seattle WA 98198; 206 824-3927 or 1-800 55BIBLE).

CD-ROM Developments The latest version of PANDORA was used to access the TLG and PHI CD-ROMs from the Mac, and LBase was available for DOS access to the same materials, along with CCAT's own updated OFFLOAD. I also demonstrated some things on my world-traveling IBYCUS System and made it available as well for hands-on use by participants, to illustrate the wide range of possible uses and approaches. CD- ROMs specific to use on IBM/DOS included Dallas Seminary's CD- Word (for Windows), Ellis' Bible Library (now available at the bargain price of $69 from S&S Enterprises, PO Box 552, Lemont IL 60439; 1-800 ROM-DISC), the CDTEDOC Latin Patristic CD, and the experimental American Bible Society (ABS) Biblical CD. My hopes to have the DAVKA (Rabbinic Hebrew, etc.) CD were not realized, mostly through my procrastination in making the request, but I attempted to provide as much information as was available to me on such items, including the announced Chadwyck-Healey Patrologia Latina (Migne) project. [See earlier OFFLINE columns for details on most of these products, especially OFFLINE 30.]

Other Products Many vendors and suppliers made software products available for demonstration. Some have received mention in previous OFFLINE columns, but most were new or updated. For the Mac, we looked at the latest items from Linguist's Software (fonts and texts, with software to manipulate them), macBible (formerly The PerfectWORD) from Zondervan, and the latest update of Peter Robinson's COLLATE. We did not have on hand, but provided information on, some other Mac products listed in Hermeneutika such as Bible Master, WORDsearch Macintosh, HyperBible, and Greek Practice Mac. For IBM/DOS machines, a wide variety of materials were presented. Newest to me were the products from Parsons Technology (PO Box 100, Hiawatha IA 52233-0100; 1-800 223-6925), including a new release called PC Bible Atlas that promises to be very useful at various levels of teaching and research since it is versatile and affordable ($69). Parsons' also has introduced a reasonably priced "GreekTools" learning program (HebrewTools is also available) with memorization drills at an elementary level, coupled with flash cards and information on NT Greek textual witnesses! John Hurd's more sophisticated Greek Tutor materials were also exhibited in a beta test version. There were a number of search and browse packages for biblical studies, including Parsons' QuickVerse 2.0, a pre-release version of TheWord from WordSoft/Word Inc. (5221 North O'Connor Blvd., Suite 1000, Irving TX 75039; 214 556-1900), and John Baima's new Bible Windows (for Windows; Silver Mountain Software, 7245 Cloverglen Drive, Dallas TX 75249; 214 709-6364). Updated information was also available for other utilities such as GRAMCORD (now at 2218 NE Brookfiew Dr., Vancouver WA 98686; 206 576-3000), ChiWriter, and BibleWorks for Windows. For MSDOS Windows, in addition to the products mentioned above, we showed the new Linguist's Software LaserGreek and LaserHebrew fonts (like those they supply for the Mac). For regular IBM/DOS environments, Multi-Lingual Scholar was represented by its own display in the book exhibit area, and information on Zondervan's ScriptureFonts was available from us. Literature describing a Chinese text system called XinTianMa from AsiaCom was also supplied by a local dealer.

Networking Through the good services of the coopted Melbourne contacts, I was provided with an account on the Internet. After I received a quick tutorial on using the Melbourne University system on which this account was located (UNIX with ELM), things went fairly smoothly: I was able, as part of the larger demonstration, to join a discussion group (IOUDAIOS) from that address and illustrate ways to make use of the vast resources available through ListServers, TelNet, FTP, and all those other magical means. I was even able to log into my University of Pennsylvania account remotely from the Melbourne University account. Harry Gilmer, Director of Scholars Press, had brought along an electronic copy of the Directory of Electronic Resources by Michael Strangelove and Diane Kovacs to show at the Symposium on Electronic Communication that he moderated, so we searched it to show other addresses, types of lists, and the like. As is often true elsewhere, network access through the Universities is widely available in Australia, but this is not always known to humanist scholars and students, nor to the institutions affiliated with the Universities. Hopefully, information sessions such as those conducted at this conference will help publicize and demystify such matters. <-----> Please send information, suggestions or queries concerning OFFLINE to Robert A. Kraft, Box 36 College Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 19104-6303. Telephone (215) 898- 5827. Internet address: KRAFT@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU (please note that the previous BITNET address is no longer operational). To request printed information or materials from OFFLINE, please supply an appropriately sized, self-addressed envelope or an address label. A complete electronic file of OFFLINE columns is available upon request (for IBM/DOS, Mac, or IBYCUS), or can be obtained from the ListServ of CONTENTS (UOTTAWA.BITNET) or of the HUMANIST discussion group (BROWNVM.BITNET). //end #38//