Request for Arabic Text Support in Affinity Suite

[Ahmed Ibrahim]

Dear Affinity Team,  

 

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to formally request the inclusion of Arabic text typing and typography support in your Affinity software suite (Designer, Photo, and Publisher). As a loyal customer and advocate of your products, I believe this addition would significantly enhance the software’s global accessibility and appeal, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.  

 

Context and Need  

1. Growing Demand: Numerous users, including myself, have highlighted the absence of Arabic support in the Affinity forums. This limitation forces many designers, businesses, and educators in Arabic-speaking regions to rely on alternative software, despite their preference for Affinity’s cost-effective and user-friendly tools.  
2. Market Opportunity: The MENA region has a thriving design industry, with increasing demand for localized content in advertising, publishing, and digital media. By adding Arabic support, Affinity could capture a loyal customer base currently underserved by mainstream design tools.  
3. Technical Requirements: Full Arabic typography support—including right-to-left (RTL) text flow, ligatures, and Harakat (diacritics)—is essential for professional design work.  

Why This Matters  

• Customer Retention: Many users, including myself, wish to fully transition from Adobe to Affinity but are held back by this gap.  
• Competitive Edge: Competitors like Adobe and Corel already offer robust multilingual support, and Affinity has an opportunity to differentiate itself by addressing this need swiftly.  
• Inclusivity: Supporting Arabic aligns with global design inclusivity standards and empowers creatives in diverse linguistic communities.  

 

 Suggested Actions  

• Prioritize Arabic text support in future updates.  
• Engage with Arabic-speaking designers and typographers to ensure cultural and technical accuracy.  
• Communicate a roadmap for RTL language support to reassure interested users.  

 

Thank you for your dedication to creating outstanding design tools. I am confident that adding Arabic support will strengthen Affinity’s position as a global leader in creative software. Please let me know if further feedback or regional insights would be helpful.  

 

Sincerely, 
Ahmed Ibrahim

[Tony W]

thanks for the request Ahmed 👍 
I would also love Right to Left text. This request is a regular one on the forums and brought to the attention of staff incl @Sean P It's not only MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Ahmed. To give an idea of populations writing Right to Left - that may be interested in Affinity 
Arabic~410-660 million

Urdu~230 million

Persian (Farsi/Dari)~127 million

Pashto~40-60 million

Sindhi~25-30 million (when written in Arabic script)

Uyghur~10-12 million

Hebrew~9-10 million
there are several other languages not included here. In any case the total above around 1 Billion. Hopefully, now Affinity has larger resources with Canva who own it - Affinity will be able to implement Right to Left text as a standard tool - or if needed a paid Plug-In. 
توني 😁 Amazing Arabic works on this Forum

 

[Ahmed Ibrahim]

Hi Tony, @Sean P

Thanks indeed for your message.

Yes, you're absolutely right, and it's very frustrating to find all this negligence from Serif in addressing this simple issue for software that's been around for over a decade, and from a company that was established since 1987. Yet, they can't fulfill their customers' demands on this very particular, simple issue (Right to Left text format). And yes, Canva, the parent company, has this support, as do other free open-source software like Inkscape, The GIMP, and Blender.

I really can't find any reasonable justification for this.

Edited May 16 by Ahmed Ibrahim

[kenmcd]

22 minutes ago, Ahmed Ibrahim said:

simple issue

LOL. 🤣

[Sir Doyle]

Hi,

This issue has been raised countless times:

Arabic Text Writing and Copy-Paste Issue in Affinity Designer V2 (RTL Not Working)

Feature Request: Right-to-left scripts for fonts such as Arabic or Hebrew

Arabic - Hebrew Support

Arabic Language Supports and more features

Arabic and Persian seems not correct

Arabic language Support
 

And the list goes on.

At this point, I am not interested in hearing more excuses—whether it's “complex,” “difficult,” or “not a priority.” Most modern design software already supports Arabic. Why is Affinity still failing to do so?

This is not a new request. Do you know how long users have been asking for RTL support? How many more years do you need to implement a feature that should have been there from the start?

Enough delays. This feature is essential for many users around the world. Please treat it with the urgency and respect it deserves.

 

Thanks

[Tony W]

remarkable @SirDoyle I hadn't realised this request for R2L on Affinity dates back at least 9 years 

[jomaro]

I think this is really critical to have RTL language support. Please consider this support in the near future.

Thanks

[PaoloT]

Like with other missing features, I wouldn't plan current and future works based on expectations from the software. It is as it is. New features may come, or they may not. All we can do is just use the software that can do what we need now.

Paolo

 

[Tony W]

Im a happy user of Affinity - & purchased both the original and version 2 - Photo Designer Publisher. 
However I do want to have a Right to Left text facility. 
If no requests are ever made - Canva/Serif/Affinity may assume that there is no demand. 
The forum allows users to make posts/requests and hopefully the team that creates Affinity & their Finance department will consider the situation and decide that Yes - the Potential demand from new customers or people who are prepared to pay for a Plug-In make it worthwhile to develop it.

[Meliora spero]

29 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

Like with other missing features, I wouldn't plan current and future works based on expectations from the software. It is as it is. New features may come, or they may not. All we can do is just use the software that can do what we need now.

That’s definitely not good advice. Figuratively speaking, that mindset will have you sitting at the back of the bus—alongside people whose best idea is to punch another hole in their belt.

[Priscilla Loewenthal]

Maybe now with Canva acquisition of Affinity, since Canva app supports RTL, they will work on RTL I'm hoping and I also am waiting for Hebrew language RTL support. 

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, Priscilla Loewenthal said:

Maybe now with Canva acquisition of Affinity, since Canva app supports RTL, they will work on RTL

They use very different code, so the acquisition doesn't remove the technical issues.

Recently, Adobe replaced the original RTL code for a better one, that Affinity could use as well. This is promising.

However, I read that InDesign can do RTL only in dedicated versions, so maybe Affinity will have to separate them in some way.

[Tony W]

7 hours ago, PaoloT said:

They use very different code, so the acquisition doesn't remove the technical issues.

Recently, Adobe replaced the original RTL code for a better one, that Affinity could use as well. This is promising.

However, I read that InDesign can do RTL only in dedicated versions, so maybe Affinity will have to separate them in some way.

Adobe, at least in Photoshop, initially had a Plug-in to allow RTL about 20 years ago (probably CS3). It was free & I guess worked as a layer (so long ago that details may be wrong). Affinity may want to consider a paid version, as not all users will benefit. 

[PaoloT]

1 hour ago, Tony W said:

Affinity may want to consider a paid version, as not all users will benefit. 

I don't know the details, but Adobe have recently switched to HarfBuzz, that should be open source and free even for commercial developers. So, there is for sure development cost, but making users pay more for something that is mostly based on open source code could be unfair.

In any case, maybe it is now just a matter of integrating HarfBuzz to the Affinity text engine. Maybe times will now be shorter.

Paolo

 

[Tony W]

3 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

I don't know the details, but Adobe have recently switched to HarfBuzz, that should be open source and free even for commercial developers. So, there is for sure development cost, but making users pay more for something that is mostly based on open source code could be unfair.

In any case, maybe it is now just a matter of integrating HarfBuzz to the Affinity text engine. Maybe times will now be shorter.

Paolo

 

Amazing - I looked at https://harfbuzz.github.io/ - and it seems a key guy is بهداد اسفهبد an Iranian / Canadian developer so he will have fixed most RTL issues in their Stable release    12 May 2025

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Tony W said:

it seems a key guy is بهداد اسفهبد

Behdad Esfahbod, for those wondering.

[Tony W]

5 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Behdad Esfahbod, for those wondering.

thanks Alfred 

[kenmcd]

  

2 hours ago, PaoloT said:

I don't know the details, but Adobe have recently switched to HarfBuzz, that should be open source and free even for commercial developers. So, there is for sure development cost, but making users pay more for something that is mostly based on open source code could be unfair.

In any case, maybe it is now just a matter of integrating HarfBuzz to the Affinity text engine. Maybe times will now be shorter.

Paolo

 

The Adobe World-Ready Composer made HarfBuzz the default shaping engine awhile ago (year+).
Before that it was their own second shaping engine, and then HarfBuzz was an alternate.
They basically have two text engines.
The original text engine and then they added the World-Ready Composer in CS4 (and missing lot of stuff until CS5, and CS6).
Many, many, many hours, and lots of money.

Affinity has the same issue they had - you cannot simply just plug-in a new shaping engine (different APIs).
It has got to be really expensive and time consuming to add another text engine (and a much more complicated one at that).

Adding complex scripts affects a lot, but RTL adds even more.
It affects everything not just some text blocks.
User interface, multiple OpenType features, dictionaries, hyphenation, justification, table of contents, footnotes, end notes, comments, change history, styles, scripting, plug-ins, search, etc., etc.
Everything.

So I doubt they, Affinity, are going to just plug-in HarfBuzz.
Adopey added another entire text engine.

Have no idea how Affinity is going to address this all.
They may add Indic support first as it will fit into LTR (would be my guess).
But even that is a huge undertaking if they continue to write their own shaper.
Dunno what they are gonna do.
We can only guess.
 

Side note: the other main current maintainer, and repo manager for HarfBuzz, Khalid Hosny, is Egyptian (IIRC he is a professor at a Cairo university). He is also the one who originally added HarfBuzz into LibreOffice to add OpenType support. And more recently added variable font support into LibreOffice. And multiple Arabic fonts he has made are available in Google Fonts. GF commissioned him to make a variable COLRv1 Arabic font as a sort of latest-font-technology demo. Someone here in the forum tried to use it in APub and APub choked on it.

[Alfred]

7 hours ago, kenmcd said:

Someone here in the forum tried to use it in APub and APub choked on it.

 

[kenmcd]

This is the one I was thinking of:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201566-all-affinity-products-failing-to-open-or-create-new-project-caused-by-a-font/#findComment-1194668

 

[Tony W]

3 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

This is the one I was thinking of:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201566-all-affinity-products-failing-to-open-or-create-new-project-caused-by-a-font/#findComment-1194668

It really brings up how complicated getting RTL is to introduce. But still good to live in hope 

 

[Alfred]

56 minutes ago, Tony W said:

It really brings up how complicated getting RTL is to introduce. But still good to live in hope 

Back in the days when Serif’s ‘Plus’ software was still being actively developed, for three or four products in the range they developed ‘Middle East’ editions supporting Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi and a couple of other RTL languages. But they needed the help of WinSoft International to achieve that, and their agreement only lasted for one version.

[kenmcd]

Adobe also had ME versions created by a partner company before World-Ready Composer (WRC) was released. I guess as WRC got better over CS4 to CS5 to CS6 that eventually the ME editions were no longer viable.