I don’t know where to look for them, but, not surprisingly, I cannot find anything worthwhile in the Microsoft Office Site. How can I install some German correction tools in my Office XP if my CD only includes, Spanish, English and French?

What about installing Arabic IME’s?

Also, if you know of any good free- shareware solution for writing in the Arabic or Chinese, I’ll be eager to try it/them!!

Thanks a lot!

Regards,

       WS.

The MS Word spellchecker etc. is quite expensive, and hard to find. I thought http://www.lingua-uk.com/lingua.htm would sell it, but a cursory glance revealed nothing.

To install special scripts in XP, open Windows XP "Control Panel" => "Regional and Language Options" => "Languages" tab and proceed from there. Quite simple, if you’ve got the XP CD and a not too crowded hard disk. You won’t need any other SW for Chinese. Fonts are included.

For simplified, I use the MS Pinyin IME; for Taiwan MS New Phonetic IME. Settings: Simplified: Full pinyin, Incomplete input, Enable learning, Enable user…, Word, Row style. T: Intelligent IME, Enable learning/user.

It takes some experimenting… The beauty of the learning thing is that when you have written a phrase a couple of times, you may be able to enter it abbreviated, like xnkl for Happy New Year instead of xinnian kuaile. You can also, if you’re lucky, find an included application in which you can enter such shortcuts yourself. <added> Some seem to be included. Try writing rmrb[spacebar]; the IME will probably suggest the characters for Renmin Ribao as the first choice. [Enter] to accept. </added> http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/IME_Paper.mspx has some helpful hints on how to use CJK IME’s.

Arabic is trickier. The MS IME uses an Arabic keyboard layout. For the few words I’ve written lately, I have picked the letters one by one from the Insert Symbol box in Word. In doing this, the letters get their correct form, and despite the cursor’s place they connect in the correct direction. (You pick b. The b will be displayed as the isolated form. Pick alif. The b changes to its initial form and connects properly to the alif, making ba.)

Oh, I hadn’t check this section for ages. Thank you anders!! I have given up the German thing… I waste less time glancing though the few paragraphs I write  than seeking the software.

As to the Chinese, well, I’m using MS Pinyin IME, too. I’m not asked to provide compositions in Traditional so that having the Taiwanese wouldn’t yield much. The shortcuts didn’t work, though. There’s always a beep when I try to type two consecutive consonants (apart from "ng" at wordend).

Your Arabic hint works also sufficiently.

Thanks once more!!

        WS.

Click Settings on the Language field (that thing belonging to the square where you select your language). Scroll to your Chinese keyboard in the language list, select it and click Properties then General, and check Incomplete Input. That should do it. And remember, check that you’ve enabled Learning.