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Thank you so much for your reply, what Mean by short code is a simple text input that reverse it, I will explain more when you type RTL the software read it as LTR okay, so in a little window inside affinity they can add a simple box for input then it give us an output as reversed text, I hope you understand, I found a simple way to do that and I've made a video on youtube i will join it bellow, I'm not talking about major updates just a simple box that reverse text then we copy and past it you will understand more by watching my video https://youtu.be/zVLIJlxjj6w Thanks to everyone, We love Affinity and We wish they help us with RTL

Thanks Callum - Any ideas when Serif is planning on adding this? I am refusing point blank to use Adobe or indeed give up on Affinity Suite and RTL.

@Sam Neil’s report refers to “most Farsi/Arabic fonts” (so it’s not just Farsi) but Farsi is indeed RTL. It’s a modified version of the Arabic alphabet, extended to include letters needed for the Persian language.

The transformation is carried out using the percentage difference, not the absolute difference. So each is .93... the size of the prior one. I don't remember if this is considered by design, or if it's a bug to be fixed someday. You should report 1 bug per topic. But this is not a bug. RTL languages are not supported in the Affinity programs, and if they are ever supported it probably won't be for a long time. Search the forums for arabic or for rtl to find many references to this.

I have been waiting for this. I thought they added RTL support in the update, disappointed tho. I am an Arabic teacher, I need RTL support in Affinity products.

First of all, I would like to express my great disappointment, I know that a great portion of people here may disagree with me. Just imagine how it happened: 1. Release version 1 2. Users request tons of essential features, for me, mainly RTL support which is ESSENTIAL "AWARD WINNING" software in "2022", and still no RTL support, I can't figure out how I paid for a software that can't type in Arabic lol 3. Release tons of updates with more bugs and glitches appearing every update 4. Fix bugs, new bugs appear 5. Development team is done with those bugs 6. Throw version 1 all together and release version 2 Perfect plan. Oh, I almost forgot, you're most likely to delete this post as it's "violating terms" ha ha ha.

RTL languages support please -- PLEASE ASAP We have been waiting for so long We need a good Arabic & other RTL languages support, no more dissociated letters!

Hi @pruus Thanks for making us aware of the crash, I've passed this along to the devs to investigate. Although as has been mentioned unfortunately we don't support RTL text.

No, again, you're wrong. Maybe stop talking about languages you don't work in and use every day, or like, at all? This is the difference between cursive and ligature based: Ligature can be said to be a sub class of cursive, but that's still not necessary for most latin scripts. Ligature based scripts are necessary for most Abjad scripts because they can't be broken up as easily. when you write something like کشتنی it's made up of the letters ک، ش ، ت، ن and ی. I really wish for your sake you were right so you didn't feel obligated to keep replying and giving me unsolicited advice but it's a little different than what you're saying. Affinity already supports cursive fonts and fonts with ligature based logic. Additionally that has nothing to do with rendering RTL text. So I don't know what you're talking about.

Yes, but in its first iteration, QXP has certain limitations with rtl scripts. Best to read what those limitations are before plunking down cash.

I always wonder how a company more recent than affinity, like canva.com, could handle RTL correctly and properly, in the browser, from the get go... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And according to the staff, it has not (yet) been implemented because at the code level integrating it with the other text-based features is much more complicated than it might seem. I'm not sure what that means but for example, I think since multiple fonts & languages can appear in the same block of text at both the character & paragraph level, it might be hard to work out how they all should work together if a line of text mixes RTL & LTR text along with all the fonts & so on.

the word you're looking for is ligature based scripts. Ligature and cursive based scripts are different. That said, Hebrew isn't even that. Regardless, myself and millions of people use RTL scripts it all the time, and as far as ligature scripts go, it's a common component of Latin and Cyrillic scripts too. it even works here: یہ لے بھایٔ بکش دہ مجھے It's a basic feature. That you don't use it or it looks complicated to you has no bearing on that.

Hi Jop, Unfortunately we do not have RTL support at this present time. Lee

Joining to the request for RTL support. In trial now and it would be a deal breaker for me too. It's inconvenient to write backwards all the time

@Shrinks99 Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums and thanks for your expert opinion on this topic. I think the overhaul of the engine would be needed for RTL (mixed direction) text, but I do not think that support for variable fonts is as difficult and I too hope it can be addressed before too long

Okay, I give up. I thought maybe there would be something after all these years, but it's time to throw in the towel. RTL support is a hopeless dream.

Hi @ibrahimayad, Welcome to the Affinity Forums As Walt has mentioned above, this is a not a bug within the Affinity applications as we simply don't currently support RTL text natively, my apologies. Our developers have confirmed that we hope to look to add this in a future version, but as it would require a complete re-write of the Affinity text engine, we're unable to provide any timescale for this at this time. I hope this clears things up.

Bluntly, in terms of the number of speakers, and consequentially, the number of likely customers: yes! I'm sure it's not a matter of wanting to "slight" any particular nationality, but it's the same problem as people who ask for support for RTL languages! These things may come in time, but it's a matter of prioritising (especially for smaller companies, with limited resources) between spending development time (and therefore money) on providing features for a (comparatively) small number of users, or working on improvements and bug fixes to benefit the vast majority.

From the point of view of the developer of some software, the main point of view is its "marketability" - i.e. the number of buyers, not some number of readers or printers. A high number of readers/printers creates certain assumptions of a high number of potential buyers, but it certainly does not have to be a direct context. Apparently, Serif made an analysis that the cost of development for complete RTL support (and that includes the suspension of work on further improvement of the applications) may not be sufficiently compensated by higher sales.

However, it does have what appears to be a bug tag, AFD-1907, and so it may be accepted as a bug by Serif, unlike the requests for RTL language support. It may also, though, be one that will be difficult to fix as you suggest. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=AFD-1907

Their text engine needs a rework it seems, for many international features to be added. This is the context for some of the commentary that you're seeing on here: Re: eventual RTL support:

Hello GihanF The best work around is : Don't waste your time here. Affinity still does not support LTR fully and you want RTL........ Post in this forum will change nothing (as far as my earlier experience with Indic Language Support basic).

Adobe did the same thing iirc, but I haven't used it in years so I can't check. Many programs "reintroduce" a font without showing the actual fallback. I just select an actual known legit font as soon as I can and then work on it after... annoying, but a showstopper. (I haven't tried APub but that would be a useful solution to "curate" the text) Probably a fix won't be added until they rewrite the text engine, ie when RTL/Vertical text is finally looked into. Which is said to be a while.

I'm almost certain that this has come up before - I think somebody asked about a centre-justified list with bullets at the start and end of each item - but I think the answer was you'd have to add the trailing bullet manually. Someday if Publisher gets right-to-left text, you could set the paragraph to RTL and the bullet would be on the right but then override that with a character style with LTR text so the text would read normally. That would work. Cheers