It's very frustrating.. years and years and we can't write in Arabic in the program (DESKTOP AND iPad)

[ADesigner]

Years and years, I used the program and waited for real development and a solution to this problem, but unfortunately, even after purchasing the version 2!!! , the problem still exists and is not resolved, not even the development of the text box so that we can use the Arabic language, although it is a simple and very easy programmatically .. very frustrating!!

Edited November 9, 2022 by ADesigner

[MoonaticDestiny]

2 hours ago, ADesigner said:

very frustrating!!

Its very frustrating. So many things missing. So many things wrong. So many years of nothing. Users should not be feeling like this. Im sorry my friend. 

[MikeTO]

Hi. Serif hasn't announced support for right-to-left text at this time. They have stated it's something they might offer in the future.

 

[Armelline]

Makes me wonder why. Reversing text is not a challenging thing to do when programming, and the alignment of the text is already an option. Is there some huge consideration that makes this a difficult feature to add? The Affinity apps don't feel like they have spaghetti codebases, so this should surely be relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things? Something like 2bn people around the world use RTL written languages, so it would seem a market segment worth supporting.

[MoonaticDestiny]

2 hours ago, Armelline said:

Is there some huge consideration that makes this a difficult feature to add?

I really dont know whats going on behind the scenes but Im tired and I cant anymore. Im leaving. 

[ADesigner]

12 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Hi. Serif hasn't announced support for right-to-left text at this time. They have stated it's something they might offer in the future.

 

lol this was 5 years ago!

[Armelline]

5 minutes ago, MoonaticDestiny said:

I really dont know whats going on behind the scenes but Im tired and I cant anymore. Im leaving. 

As someone eagerly awaiting crop to selection I too have lost faith. Affinity seem to pick new features by putting a small bucket at the bottom of the grand canyon then lobbing rocks randomly off random ledges. If the rock lands in the bucket the feature gets added. It's clearly a small bucket.

 

Edit: From the link above.

Quote

 We have our own code to compose and render text, and this does not support r2l languages. Adding that support will be a huge job.

What on earth did they do when they wrote their code to compose and render text? At literally no point in that process do they have a string that they can just... reverse? Mind-boggling.

[debraspicher]

7 minutes ago, Armelline said:

Makes me wonder why. Reversing text is not a challenging thing to do when programming, and the alignment of the text is already an option. Is there some huge consideration that makes this a difficult feature to add? The Affinity apps don't feel like they have spaghetti codebases, so this should surely be relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things? Something like 2bn people around the world use RTL written languages, so it would seem a market segment worth supporting.

I seem to remember it was said on their social (I can't remember if it was YT or Twitter.. might've been both) by their brand acct that the way the text engine was written makes it very difficult to make such changes casually. So I took that to mean they would need to rewrite it. I think most things in v2 that were added are a good start because they're in demand as far as the graphics portion. That said, it seriously sucks for people who desperately need this feature to make full use of the software. I write in Japanese occasionally and have seen it can be wiggy as far as display and though I never make use of it for long-form document creation, I can certainly understand where those limitations are serious.

[Armelline]

Just now, LondonSquirrel said:

This has been discussed before. Reversing a string is trivial. But a lot more is needed than that to make a DTP application. RTL with cursive text is tricky.

I frequently see badly produced RTL text. Take a look at this sample text. The kashidas are horrible and inconsistent, the spacing between numbers and words is broken, the spacing in general is ugly. It does not look very professional to me. It looks to me like the justification engine in this app is the programming equivalent of "shove it in there, make it fit". The output is from Adobe. Could do better? I think so, very much better.

What you discuss there is poor non-latin font support. That's a different, though admittedly connected issue. But all it does is point out another glaring weakness in this suite.

[MikeTO]

11 minutes ago, Armelline said:

Makes me wonder why. Reversing text is not a challenging thing to do when programming, and the alignment of the text is already an option. Is there some huge consideration that makes this a difficult feature to add? The Affinity apps don't feel like they have spaghetti codebases, so this should surely be relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things? Something like 2bn people around the world use RTL written languages, so it would seem a market segment worth supporting.

Serif will want to do it in a thoughtful way like they just did with footnotes, sidetones, and endnotes. I'm sure Serif knows how important this feature is to a lot of potential customers.

I said it's a lot of work to add RTL to an existing program because text direction affects everything in a program's text engine so all of the code would need to be reviewed and updated.

[Armelline]

1 minute ago, MikeTO said:

Serif will want to do it in a thoughtful way like they just did with footnotes, sidetones, and endnotes. I'm sure Serif knows how important this feature is to a lot of potential customers.

Hope you're right. They've certainly had years to think about it.

1 minute ago, MikeTO said:

I said it's a lot of work to add RTL to an existing program because text direction affects everything in a program's text engine so all of the code would need to be reviewed and updated.

That speaks to a shocking lack of foresight when programming their text engine.

[MikeTO]

5 minutes ago, Armelline said:

That speaks to a shocking lack of foresight when programming their text engine.

No, it's just a result of having to make choices. Companies that try to do everything in a program's first version are more likely to fail, even if it means having to rework some code at a later date.

[Armelline]

Just now, MikeTO said:

No, it's just a result of having to make choices. Companies that try to do everything in a program's first version are more likely to fail, even if it means having to rework some code at a later date.

Can't agree with this assessment. Even if they had to make compromises at the start, completely eliminating the possiblity of later adding a pretty major feature option speaks to lack of foresight in my opinion. I'd not be surprised if the text engine issue isn't really the issue, but rather the further implications such as LondonSquirrel pointed out.

[Distill7]

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

the justification engine in this app is the programming equivalent of "shove it in there, make it fit".

They don't have a good justification engine compared to Adobe, which uses Donald Knuth algorithm from Tex. Word is also horrible at justified text as much as as Affinity.

[debraspicher]

Here are their comments re: vertical text. Might be similar regarding RTL.

 

[debraspicher]

1 hour ago, Armelline said:

That speaks to a shocking lack of foresight when programming their text engine.

As someone who writes CMS and other things from scratch, it's not at all that shocking. A program suite like Affinity/Adobe are not written by amateurs, but it takes almost infinite foresight to see issues that sometimes only come with experience. It's not possible for a programmer to have all the foresight of a seasoned team if they're just getting started especially. So sometimes things must be done out of order, or not the way it should be done the first time in order to properly scale. Hence the need to take the time refactor which costs obviously time & money. Even if one thinks they can foresee it, there's always other distractions and very important distinctions that don't come up until later that may lead to refactor. Users pounding the table for new features I'm sure is a major pressure. It's not as simple as many think and I have a lot of sympathy for the developers specifically for this reason, because I've been in their shoes to some degree. I know the pressure to get something delivered on time sometimes outweighs having things "properly" written. We all look at our code and constantly wish we'd written something different or more efficiently. Always.

[ADesigner]

My friends, I am not here to attack Affinity or compare it with other software .. because I really love this company and have supported it for years .. but I feel frustrated because I waited about five years to solve the problem of writing the text in Arabic in any of the company’s programs ... This topic is just to express My frustration and highlight the problem that many users face..maybe it will be resolved soon..thank you

[Hexara]

2 hours ago, ADesigner said:

My friends, I am not here to attack Affinity or compare it with other software .. because I really love this company and have supported it for years .. but I feel frustrated because I waited about five years to solve the problem of writing the text in Arabic in any of the company’s programs ... This topic is just to express My frustration and highlight the problem that many users face..maybe it will be resolved soon..thank you

+1 here, I really support Serif, their payment model is fantastic but on the other hand, such a feature requested many many times for 5-6 years and still not implemented is really a disappointment.

[cybercrystal]

3 hours ago, debraspicher said:

Here are their comments re: vertical text. Might be similar regarding RTL.

 

Sometimes I would work on Chinese contents which meet the same problems with Japanese and Korean words. It seems that Serif lacks the experience in internationalization. Those big rule holders such as Adobe and Corel think highly of it and have done great works long time ago. Maybe Serif need more help from its community or FOSS community.

[cybercrystal]

Same feeling with you.

I wonder if Serif could open their APIs for developers from Affinity community so that they can create various plug-ins to solve these old and very frequently asked problems. Full RTL&CJK support, vertical texts, and compelete plug-in support would be the last puzzles of Serif to challenge the old kings.

[Mustafa Kadhem]

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!

[Tia Lapis]

13 hours ago, Armelline said:

Can't agree with this assessment. Even if they had to make compromises at the start, completely eliminating the possiblity of later adding a pretty major feature option speaks to lack of foresight in my opinion. I'd not be surprised if the text engine issue isn't really the issue, but rather the further implications such as LondonSquirrel pointed out.

But RTL support is *NO* major feature.

[Patrick Connor]

1 hour ago, Tia Lapis said:

But RTL support is *NO* major feature.

You are trolling every thread where this feature request is being bumped. Your input adds nothing. Customers can ask for whatever they want 

Stop this.

[Tia Lapis]

Was not my intend to troll, sorry if it appeared so.

[mrg0lden]

Personally, I'd have been happy with just RTL support in version 2, and I'd have paid for that. I guess I'd stick to V1 as it covers my needs.