If you have been working with desktop publishing software such as Pagemaker, InDesign, Quark Xpress and Pages you may want to check out iCalamus. Developed specifically for Mac OS X by German firm “invers Software” iCalamus is easy to use and is priced quite competitively. Thanks to Mārtiņš Zemzaris (a.k.a. Gludahill) a Latvian localisation has been available since June 2008.

The Web site and the User Manual have also been translated into Latvian. The full version is available for EUR 129.

The most Latvianised Windows to date. No matter how much we delved into the system it seems that just about everything got translated into Latvian this time round. The Control Panel, Online Help, Mail, Calendar, warning dialogs, Windows Media player - click on any of the images below to get an idea of the extent of Microsoft’s latest version of Windows (more commonly known as Vista) for the Latvian market.

  

  

  

  

  

This has been the largest localisation project in the Baltics to date and took the combined efforts of Microsoft Latvia, Tilde and the Latvian Academy of Science’s Terminology Commission nearly 18 months to complete. The latter organisation was involved since Windows Vista also introduced new concepts and terminology which had to find the appropriate Latvian translations.

Estonian and Lithuanian versions of Windows Vista were also developed and all three Baltic versions were released in the summer of 2007.

This is the current operating system running on all of the latest Macintosh computers. Also known as OS X 10.4 not much has changed since Mac OS X Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) in terms of Latvian language support. The keyboard driver works well (based on either the Option or ~ key) and all Cocoa-based applications (iLife, iCal, TextEdit, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, GarageBand) work beautifully with Latvian fonts. Non Unicode applications such as MS Word X and AppleWorks will still have problems with Latvian fonts and you will need extra software such as Baltic Utilities.

Through the International System Preferences it is possible to select Latvian dates, time and number formats as well as the Latvian keyboard driver.

The Language tab allows you to drag Latviešu to the top of the list, but will cause minimum changes to the System in terms of translated application menus and dialogs.

The Formats tab allows you to choose the Latvia (Latvian) region which automatically brings up the Latvian date, time and number formats. Unfortunately the short form date formats are still not correct (similar to the US short date format) and hopefully this will be addressed in OS X Leopard.

The Input Menu tab allows you to select the Latvian keyboard which belongs to the Central European script. It is great to see that Apple has adopted the Option key approach to obtain the Latvian diacritical letters.

The Microsoft Windows XP Latvian Language Interface Pack provides the desktop user with an approx. 80% localised user experience by translating a reduced set of user interface elements.

You’ll need a licensed copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2. If you can’t get used to the Latvian interface you can return to the English version.
Download link here.

Linux, which already has a significant share of the server market is now making its way to the workstation as more organizations decide to migrate to OpenOffice.org, a free open-source alternative to Microsoft’s Office software. The Linux Centre at the University of Latvia together with the Latvian Open Source Association have translated the interface of OpenOffice.org 2.0 to Latvian. A spelling checker is also a work in progress.

The Latvian interface for GNOME 2.14 has been completed and GNOME 2.16 is 98% done.

For more details check out the University of Latvia Linux Centre Web page.

This product is more than 5 years old, but nonetheless an important milestone for handheld computers (also known as PDAs). Using Palm’s Graffiti handwriting emulation software together with Interpilot it was possible to input Latvian text with the supplied stylus. For example “a-garumzīme” was obtained by drawing the letter “a” followed by the accent stroke (which for Latvian was similar to the digit “7").

Interpilot begun supporting the Latvian language with version 1.5 (around 1999) and worked with Palm OS 2.0-4.1. Sergey Menshikov, the author of Interpilot, discontinued the product in 2002 to pursue other interests.