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Macromedia Flash does not
support Right-to-left languages. It is broken and needs to be
fixed. It currently doesn't meet the standards we've come to expect
from a company, which constantly expresses a commitment to show
the world 'what the web can be'. The following is a formal consumer's
complaint addressed at Macromedia and the Macromedia Flash product
manager.
We, Flash users from the Middle East, were very disappointed to
find that despite numerous complaints, Macromedia has failed to
offer any support for RTL (Right To Left) languages and by doing
so continue to exclude an entire community of developers from
using its product successfully. While Flash MX revolutionizes
the Web, the Middle East is left behind due to Flash's fundamental
defects.
The current state creates a reality where Flash is utilized mostly
for design oriented projects and isn't being used to develop the
sort of Rich applications Macromedia is rigorously promoting.
It is not that we don't want to - we simply can't. Flash sites
and applications which do make use of RTL require innovative programming
solutions which are not cost effective and are time consuming
to develop. The end result is never sufficient and can't offer
a satisfactory solution, especially when large scale projects
are involved.
The fact of the matter is that Flash remains a costly technology
which appears to be irrelevant in the Middle East and parts of
Asia. We would like to change that. We are all deeply inspired
by Macromedia's commitment to make the Web all that it can be
and simply ask "Shouldn't we, as people who use RTL languages,
have the right to use Flash in order to express our voice in our
own language?".
The solution we are after is quite simple. We expect Macromedia
to declare its willingness and commitment to deal with the RTL
problem and offer a workable solution. Such a solution will probably
involve implementing the bidirectional algorithm into the Flash
player, an algorithm which is implemented in numerous other computing
environments. We call on everyone who feels that the Middle East,
especially at times like these, is a part of what the Web should
be to join our campaign and sign this petition.
Examples of the current faults and poor results:
Hebrew Related: Ex_1
| Ex_2 | Ex_3
| Ex_4 | Ex_5
| Ex_6
Arabic Related: Ex_1
| Ex_2 | Ex_3
| Ex_4 | Ex_5
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