RTL Arabic language support 2023

[Gihan F]

Once again and again and again, please, pretty please, support rtl texts on affinity package, I use affinity publisher to setup Arabic books with long texts, and it takes sooooo long to prepare texts outside affinity then paste them back to the the publisher.

Please help!

[PaulEC]

4 hours ago, Gihan F said:

Once again and again and again,

... it is not as easy to implement as a lot of people seem to think! Serif have said that they will add RTL when possible, but that it will take some time to implement, possibly needing a complete rewrite of the text engine.

IMHO, I think that it would be good to add RTL support for those who need it, but that there are a lot of other features and fixes, needed by the majority of users, which the development team should sort out before they use limited resources to work on a feature which is only of interest to a minority of users. (Before anyone tells me how many people use RTL languages, that is not the point: The important thing is how many more people would buy the software because it supports RTL.)

 

[PaoloT]

3 hours ago, BAKAI said:

Post in this forum will change nothing

Hum… so, this explains why they didn’t implement the features I ordered them!

 

[debraspicher]

16 hours ago, Gihan F said:

Once again and again and again, please, pretty please, support rtl texts on affinity package, I use affinity publisher to setup Arabic books with long texts, and it takes sooooo long to prepare texts outside affinity then paste them back to the the publisher.

Please help!

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:

[Ahmad Ghilman]

It's ironic how arabic text, the most 6th language used in the world, still can't be applied to this software. I doesn't make sense at all.

[PaoloT]

56 minutes ago, Ahmad Ghilman said:

It's ironic how arabic text, the most 6th language used in the world, still can't be applied to this software. I doesn't make sense at all.

It makes sense, in that it is one of the most used languages, but not one of the most printed. The country publishing most books, for example, is China, followed by the United States and, much behind, the United Kingdom. Then come France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Spain, Italy and South Korea.

Therefore, from the point of view of a developer of software to make books (and the likes), no RTL language can be considered a priority. This is not only in the case of Serif: Adobe took forever to implement RTL support, and a long time to tune it up. Having the advantage of being based in a country officially speaking the mostly used language in books, makes supporting every other language not so urgent.

I see this matter in a different perspective: most of what I write originates in English or Italian. But it must then be translated both in Chinese and Arabic. So, a program only dealing with Roman typography is not enough for my work.

Paolo

 

[Pšenda]

9 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Therefore, from the point of view of a developer of software

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.

[Gihan F]

I understand the purchase and printing volume of RTL languages plus marketability point that don't encourage developers to work on RTL option, but wish to highlight that a huge number of users in the middle east and other areas are opting to buy affinity- once in a life time payment- to avoid paying monthly fees to adobe creative cloud package. At some point, I hope that affinity considers RTL to compete with adobe package that support RTL writing.

[stinol]

On 2/5/2023 at 1:48 PM, PaulEC said:

 a complete rewrite of the text engine.

Serif released version 2.
It was a good point to rewrite text engine and paragraph compiler completely.
And it's the main thing to be done.
Thats I'm telling you as a man who designs multilingual catalogues every month using Designer IN REAL PRODUCTION. The rest works fine.
Good stable text engine supporting ANY possible semiotic system — that's what you really need at first.

Edited October 31, 2023 by stinol

[Andreas Scherer]

On 3/18/2023 at 7:48 AM, Gihan F said:

buy affinity [...] paying monthly fees to adobe

There certainly are more options than just these two.

[LKINNEY]

On 2/5/2023 at 1:47 PM, Gihan F said:

Once again and again and again, please, pretty please, support rtl texts on affinity package, I use affinity publisher to setup Arabic books with long texts, and it takes sooooo long to prepare texts outside affinity then paste them back to the the publisher.

Please help!

May I know where you copy and paste your arabic text?