[HECnet] Arabic / Unicode support on VMS?

[Dennis Boone]

Does VMS support Arabic text in the console (VT-series terminals etc)
or graphical modes (X11)?

In about 1983, I did some work on VMS 3.x systems in Riyadh.   The user
terminals were Tandberg 2200 family devices with Arabic language
support.   I don't recall there being anything special about the
installed VMS: it had no significant localizations in terms of system
messages, etc.   We were able to do mixed English and Arabic text on
these terminals using standard system utilities (EDT), COBOL
applications and the Cincom Total database.   The terminals operated on a
set-shift model, and it seems like maybe the | character was the shift.
Everything was single-byte character sets.   IIRC the terminals dealt
with the Arabic positional shifting character forms.

I suspect this isn't exactly what you're looking for, though.

De