Diwan at the Core of Apple Magazine

Apple Magazine is aimed at all Apple users in the Arabic speaking world, keeping them up to date with developments in the Mac world from hardware and software reviews to news of exhibitions and seminars. Produced monthly, it has a readership of over 15,000 in the Middle East and Europe. When founded three years ago, Diwan’s al-Nashir al-Sahafi professional publishing software was the obvious choice for publishing the magazine - it was the only DTP software offering bilingual Arabic-English working. The software is used in all aspects of the magazine’s production, from text input to page make- up and colour separation.
As a pioneering magazine using pioneering software, the relationship between Apple Mag’s publishers PSL (Photo Setting Limited) and Diwan has been close, with many new product developments coming forth. Editor George Kandalaft’s input to Diwan has helped the company to closely tailor its product to the real-life needs of its users, for example in the wide range of typographic facilities and support for Arabic dictionaries.
This process of development is still going on: in discussion at the moment are facilities such as support for a wider range of non-PostScript printers, and upgrades to include new features from the latest version of the program on which al-Sahafi is based, Letraset’s Design Studio.
George commented: «The software has many features which help to make publication design more logical. The block-orientation is very useful, making it much easier for us to manipulate articles and pictures at will instead of being tied to fixed page designs. The software is also very easy to use.»