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I found this one, in the Find box (as Search criteria) of the document viewer.

What is supposed to match?

Moayad Mardini
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OrElse
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    It seems to be an Arabic character. Not sure what this has to do with programming though. – Brandon Oct 27 '09 at 14:14
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    A poorly formulated question perhaps but looking at Remou's response, I'd considder it programming related and I have learned something new. – Lieven Keersmaekers Oct 27 '09 at 14:31
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    Suggest changing title to "What is" instead of "Who is" – shufler Oct 27 '09 at 14:38
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    Changed title as @shufler suggested. – Daniel Daranas Oct 27 '09 at 14:45
  • Honestly, I fail to see the relation to programming. This sounds more like a question that should be on superuser.com. – gnovice Oct 27 '09 at 14:55
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    This is an option in search engines which support Arabic, so I consider it as programming-related. – Moayad Mardini Oct 27 '09 at 14:57
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    Internationalization is programming-related. – Lieven Keersmaekers Oct 27 '09 at 15:09
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    I don't see how two people voted that this isn't a "real question"! – Moayad Mardini Oct 27 '09 at 15:24
  • @Lieven: The question and answers seem to focus on searching for Arabic characters in IE. How is "searching" programming-related? Wouldn't that make everyone who uses Google a programmer? – gnovice Oct 27 '09 at 15:43
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    @gnovice: Good one :). Searching in IE explorer isn't offcourse. Searching in and by itself **is** most definitly programming related. I just started reading the Algorithm Design manual and it seems *a lot of* problems are solved by sorting and (yes) searching. – Lieven Keersmaekers Oct 31 '09 at 13:20
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    Closed ? Really ? The **WPF** document viewer has a native search text box, with option "match alef hamza". Developers want to know what it is to explain it to the project supervisor ! It's definitely the good place to ask. Probably a good tag as WPF is just missing. – JYL Oct 04 '12 at 13:47

2 Answers2

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I'm a speaker of Arabic, and Alef Hamza is the character Alef "ا", and Hamza "ء" (or Madda "~") is written with it, like "أ", "إ", or "آ".

So that option means if you want to match Alef only, or Alef with something else.

Example, some search engines consider "è, é, ê or ë" as "e", but others consider them other characters.

Zoot
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Moayad Mardini
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24

Match alef hamza Specifies whether you want Internet Explorer to match alef characters with hamza or madda when searching for text of Middle Eastern languages.

For example, if you want to find a word that begins with alef and specify match alef hamza, then the word will not be matched if it begins with alef hamza above, alef hamza below, or alef madda. If it is specified, you must enter the correct form of alef for a match.

-- http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/Arabicdev/IE6/wPapers.aspx

Fionnuala
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