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I recommend using Thunderbird for email (for Macintosh or Windows). While Outlook may work, it is a constant target for virus and spyware writers, and therefore not a safe email client to use. You can download Thunderbird at www.mozilla.com.
Configuring Thunderbird for Arabic or Hebrew
- set your outgoing message encoding to UTF-8
- Install the BiDi Mail UI extension for Thunderbird
BiDi Extension for Thunderbird allows you to control the paragraph direction for proper input in Arabic or Hebrew. It requires that you are using Thunderbird 1.5, so make sure you have that version installed. Once installed you get the option in the Format menu to Change Paragraph Direction. It seems to work ok. It does only allow one paragraph direction per email (it will appear as if you can have both RTL and LTR directions when you compose, but will revert to all RTL when you send).
Chat
There are several options out there, but Trillian seems to be the best bet for Windows users. The free version allows you to type Arabic or Hebrew using the built-in Windows keyboard, though the paragraph direction isn't quite right. You may be able to adjust this by changing your settings for non-Unicode programs to Arabic or Hebrew, but this will also affect any other non-Unicode programs you have installed. So you may find this troublesome.
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