Paragon Software, a specialist in handheld and palmtop computer software, announced the beginning of shipments of its products to the Middle East market. Paragon says that Harel Ltd, the official distributor of 3Com/Palm Computing in Israel, has been selling the Palm III computers with localized Hebrew version of Palm OS since May 28, 1999. During the first day, 55 such devices were sold in Israel, thus constituting about a month's amount of sales in Russia.

The problem in software localization for languages like Hebrew and Arab is in reading and inputting information from right to left. From viewpoint of software design, this is the most principal difference from the European languages. Yet Paragon Software managed to solve these problems successfully.

The official starting date of PiLoc sales in the Middle East is set to July 1, 1999. Since this day, both PiLoc Hebrew and PiLoc Arabic versions of Palm OS will be available in Paragon Software Internet shops.

Paragon specialists mentioned the point that development of PiLoc Arabic strongly required the 11-pixel Arab font, which was not available at that time. The problem was solved by another Russian company, ParaType, a leading specialist in font design. Paragon Software ordered the development of Arabic fonts and licensed them for use in PiLoc Arabic.

Currently negotiations are under way between Paragon Software and Symbian on development a similar solution for EPOC32 platform.

Source: InfoArt News Agency

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