I don't know which Arabic code page they used for that terminal implementation 
(this was early-to-mid-1980's time frame).  I didn't even know what a code page 
was in those days, because I never had to deal with them at all.

We were mainly a VM/VSE/SP shop with an OS/VS1 system available for testing.  
No ISPF at all.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 11:46 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

On 2017-03-13, at 09:36, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:

> From a software company I worked for many distant moons ago that also 
> invented a 3270-like "terminal" for sale to an Arabic company (actually it 
> was an 8-bit micro-processor device with two 8-inch floppy drives) I can 
> actually answer that question:
> 
> FED345CBA
>  
What code page?

> Although Arabic word writing is right to left, numbers are written left to 
> right.  Most disconcerting on a 3270-type device when typing out words and 
> numbers, the cursor suddenly stops moving as the numbers are pushed out in 
> the opposite direction from the text.
>  
ISPF Edit/View now do a pretty good job of supporting Unicode; UTF-8; subject 
to teminal capability.  (Buggy, but support works at it.) I wonder whether the 
terminals have kept up?

> As I remember, the terminal implementation team's leader told me that the 
> trickiest part of that terminal emulation was getting the Arabic 
> letter-connector glyphs correct.  Letter glyphs would literally change shape 
> as subsequent letters were typed, and change back again if you back-spaced 
> over a letter.

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