
Computers and Israel

                                        A Report From Israel
                                             by Stanley Kanner 

Here in Israel people take to new electronic gizmos as if in a feeding frenzy.  It is striking to see the ancient setting of Jerusalem in a surrealistic mix  with technology everywhere you look.  Hasidim with their long beards, gabardine coats, peayot (curls of hair that never get cut), and cellular phones held to their ears. 

I had a meeting with an internet provider, Net Media, two weeks ago.  It was at 4pm when suddenly an announcement was made alerting everyone that it was time to stop work in order to have the evening prayer.

Computers are big here... very big!  The Ministry of Education has started a program to give every teacher in the country their own PC.  There are many educational and just for fun BBSs.  Internet prov-iders are springing up left and right and are instituting price wars to get their share of an ever expanding Israeli market.  In fact, the Internet seems to be the slice of personal computing most enticing to Israelis. It is talked about as if it were synonymous with computers. Not much different in the US!

There seems to be very little movement towards Windows 95.  It doesn't appear that the advertising blitz which was fired up in America occurred here at all. I'm not absolutely sure of this since I arrived in Israel just this past September.  My sense, however, is rather low interest and slow movement toward Windows95.
 
I recently spoke with Itamar Afek who is the Internet Librarian for the Ministry of Foreign affairs. Itamar knows the ins and outs of Windows applications.   He has started a side business to set up his customers' computers so that they will be able do a range of  Internet functions (internet phone, etc.).  One of the problems Itamar is working on is the use of Hebrew on the web.  Without Hebrew fonts loaded in Windows, the aleph bet appears on the screen as garbage characters.  Hebrew text can be seen when used as a graphics file, but it is difficult to get links working from these files.  Right now Itamar is experimenting with the use of mapping programs.  A scan of the Hebrew used on the net shows that nobody has yet been able to perfect the system of links from a Hebrew character set that can be used by computers without the Hebrew fonts.  

I have personally had trouble with Hebrew word processors.  Not having the Hebrew windows version limits me to a program called Dagesh.  Dagesh brags that it has thirty keyboards.  This is a bit of an exaggeration, as there really is not a whole lot of difference between British, Australian, Canadian, and American English.  Its fonts for Hebrew are limited, and I like the ones that I have on my old  DOS Hebrew text editor better. Dagesh also has very limited graphics manipulation.  You pretty much stick a graphic somewhere and then decide it's much better to keep it where you originally placed it. Again the unusual mix of the old and new!  

Perhaps it is the small size and sense of isolation of this place that drive people out on the net.  Surrounded by countries that are at best neutral toward it and at worst openly calling for its destruction, Israelis have always felt confined within the borders of this tiny country.  The urge to travel has always been great here.  The Internet is the technological extension of that desire.  

So, if you meet one of the many Israelis out on the net, the most important Hebrew word to know is Shalom.  It means Peace.  It is also used for Hello and Good-by.  If you want to get more advanced, ken means yes and lo means no.  But, for now shalom will do. Shalom!

Stan Kanner is the founder of CompuEd, the online high school. We hope that he continues to provide us with  insight into the Israeli society's preoccupation with technology. A number of American chip companies have created an Israeli presence where bleeding edge computer research is taking place..  Stan is a regular WindoWatch writer and can be reached at stankan@netvision.net.il


Jim Plumb Reports on What's New With Acrobat 2.1?

Whats's new? Mostly good news for people on NT and Sun plat-forms. The Adobe Acrobat Reader v2.1 can now be run on the following:

      SunOS(TM) 4.1.3 & 4.1.4 
      Sun SPARC Solaris(R) 2.3 & 2.4 
      Hewlett Packard HP-UX 9.03 and above 
      Windows NT 3.5 (or later), Windows 3.1, and Windows 95
      OS/2 2.11 or later in Windows compatibility mode. 

One thing you should know is that release 2.1 does not change the format of PDF files. Exchange and Reader 2.0 can open and view PDF files as before, but some functionality has been added to the Reader to enable some Plug-ins to work with it (see below). At this time I do not know if there is anything new with Exchange or Distiller in Release 2.1. Once I get any information on that I will pass it on.


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