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Fix RTL for Arabic, Persian and Hebrew languages


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53 minutes ago, Mohamad said:

Is there any update about this problem?

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Don't hold your breath. I started talking to Serif about Arabic language support in 2008. They choose to ignore a market segment. This is just an opportunity for a competitor to pick up the slack and take over the entire market. They can't be bothered, they are not interested they have no plans to do it. so don't waste your time.

I might be wrong, but my impression is, the company has taken a conscious decision not to support RTL languages but just don't want to tell clients flat out that they are not interested in supporting RTL. I can not speculate as to the reasons, but had they really wanted to support Arabic or Hebrew it would have been done by now.

Edited by Hilmi Al-Kindy
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2 hours ago, Hilmi Al-Kindy said:

Don't hold your breath. I started talking to Serif about Arabic language support in 2008. They choose to ignore a market segment. This is just an opportunity for a competitor to pick up the slack and take over the entire market. They can't be bothered, they are not interested they have no plans to do it. so don't waste your time.

I might be wrong, but my impression is, the company has taken a conscious decision not to support RTL languages but just don't want to tell clients flat out that they are not interested in supporting RTL. I can not speculate as to the reasons, but had they really wanted to support Arabic or Hebrew it would have been done by now.

yeah when I wanted to buy affinity photo + designer this topic was the only reason I just got myself affinity photo.
Guess I'll stay with inkscape. and the version 1.0 is just a warning sign to all the paid programs! It supports RTL it supports linux and the performance is very good right now.

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5 hours ago, Hilmi Al-Kindy said:

Don't hold your breath. I started talking to Serif about Arabic language support in 2008. They choose to ignore a market segment. This is just an opportunity for a competitor to pick up the slack and take over the entire market. They can't be bothered, they are not interested they have no plans to do it. so don't waste your time.

I might be wrong, but my impression is, the company has taken a conscious decision not to support RTL languages but just don't want to tell clients flat out that they are not interested in supporting RTL. I can not speculate as to the reasons, but had they really wanted to support Arabic or Hebrew it would have been done by now.

oh, that's extremely bad news :( :( :( 

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Most likely the price point they have set for the software is too low to justify the hire of a programmer to add this functionality. Serif has always set their software on the value end of the pricing spectrum. I can't see any other explanation for why 12 years later they still can't support Arabic language. I don't know in real life how big the company is, but many companies that do business on the internet look like big companies but in reality are just a small team of 2 to 10 people sometimes working out of someones garage. Now I'm sure Serif is bigger than that, they have global distribution even back when products were sold in physical CD, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are big enough to hire 1 or 2 extra programmers.

But if you look according to a quick internet search, Arabic is spoken by roughly 420 million people in the world. I am an Arab, I know for a fact that most of the market here is for cheaper value software and as soon as a solid alternative to Adobe products is introduced, a huge new market segment will be open to them immediately. These days you don't even need a regional company to help you market, you just flood google ads with marketing your product. That is a lot of software licenses waiting to be sold.

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1 hour ago, Hilmi Al-Kindy said:

big enough to hire 1 or 2 extra programmers.

But if you look according to a quick internet search, Arabic is spoken by roughly 420 million people in the world. I am an Arab, I know for a fact that most of the market here is for cheaper value software and as soon as a solid alternative to Adobe products is introduced, a huge new market segment will be open to them immediately.

Your calculations make me wonder again:

How comes that there is no design software on the market from a company in the RTL world? In particular because they also will be aware about 420 million people and huge new market. I can't imagine none of them knows about software development. But then what may be the reason that not even 1 or 2 people start doing it, like Microsoft and Apple got started initially? Is it some political reason which makes it difficult or even impossible to code programs?

Just in case: I don't want to provoke or blame anyone (as it got assumed after I asked that question before) – I am just very interested to understand.

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ADOBE and Microsoft fully support RTL, but Microsoft does not have a solid artwork or desktop publishing solution (publisher is basically abandonware now with no updates in ages) and Adobe's solution is expensive and subscription based which many people try to avoid. Apple has been supporting Arabic language with strong solid support since the 80s. In the 90's Quark was king of desktop publishing and it too had solid Arabic language support. So you are incorrect in assuming there are no Arabic language programs. The issue is specifically with Serif's failure to support this market.

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Your calculations make me wonder again:

How comes that there is no design software on the market from a company in the RTL world? In particular because they also will be aware about 420 million people and huge new market. I can't imagine none of them knows about software development. But then what may be the reason that not even 1 or 2 people start doing it, like Microsoft and Apple got started initially? Is it some political reason which makes it difficult or even impossible to code programs?

Just in case: I don't want to provoke or blame anyone (as it got assumed after I asked that question before) – I am just very interested to understand.

 

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1 hour ago, Hilmi Al-Kindy said:

So you are incorrect in assuming there are no Arabic language programs.

I did not assume this. I wonder why there is none developed from a RTL company, means a company which is founded and working in the RTL world. Instead it appears 460 Mio people from the RTL world need to request software in the LTR world. – Is something wrong with Arabic software development?

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@Hilmi Al-Kindy

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :) 

Quote

....They can't be bothered, they are not interested they have no plans to do it. so don't waste your time.

It is not fair to say we have decided not to undertake this work and simply have not said so, but that is an easy misapprehension to have given some of these threads. We also understand it must be frustrating for the software to look like it is suitable for your needs but in fact it is missing this vital functionality for that market segment. We try not to market to regions where sales are inappropriate, but social media and the internet make that very difficult to control.

We have said that we do absolutely want to add support for more complex text composition (as you know it is not as simple as RTL instead of LTR it is often mixed within a single sentence) and we know (and have admitted) that it will be some time before that is possible, mainly because the developers capable of this work are currently busy with other high priority features. Our company size (<100) does not restrict the employment process, it's just a matter of finding the right people. We would love to employ other experienced developers to speed up this important work to benefit the whole Affinity range.

No doubt someone will now rip that statement to pieces and hit me over the head with it, but it is written with good intentions of clarity because you seem to be making definitive statements that are not correct.

Patrick Connor
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46 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

@Hilmi Al-Kindy

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :) 

It is not fair to say we have decided not to undertake this work and simply have not said so, but that is an easy misapprehension to have given some of these threads. We also understand it must be frustrating for the software to look like it is suitable for your needs but in fact it is missing this vital functionality for that market segment. We try not to market to regions where sales are inappropriate, but social media and the internet make that very difficult to control.

We have said that we do absolutely want to add support for more complex text composition (as you know it is not as simple as RTL instead of LTR it is often mixed within a single sentence) and we know (and have admitted) that it will be some time before that is possible, mainly because the developers capable of this work are currently busy with other high priority features. Our company size (<100) does not restrict the employment process, it's just a matter of finding the right people. We would love to employ other experienced developers to speed up this important work to benefit the whole Affinity range.

No doubt someone will now rip that statement to pieces and hit me over the head with it, but it is written with good intentions of clarity because you seem to be making definitive statements that are not correct.

Hey there!

just letting you know that me and my team might be your people.

ive sent you guys an email with a tutorial showing our app that fixes the RTL writing with a script.

to anyone who’s interested - check this out:

hopefully we could work together!

 

 

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2 hours ago, thomaso said:

I did not assume this. I wonder why there is none developed from a RTL company, means a company which is founded and working in the RTL world. Instead it appears 460 Mio people from the RTL world need to request software in the LTR world. – Is something wrong with Arabic software development?

Sorry i don't understand your question.

There is only about 4-5 graphic design software (adobe, corel, inscape, affinity, and... one or 2 more very small ones). why in the world should one of them (or one of them) be created in the "Arabic world"? is there really there 2 worlds?... maybe the "Chinese world" needs a graphic application created in china?... no, a popular software supports all languages.

(sorry for my bad English - maybe someone can explain my point better)

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This is probably one of the very basic decisions each management has to take: Where to allocate resources, viewing the current tasks at hand, plus the long term commitment that follows.

Probably the good explanations in this thread will ultimately lead to offer a solution to this quite relevant part of the worlds creative community. I believe it should be better served than today. But in the end, without knowing what is going on at the moment, nobody knows. It is quite normal in the software industry that announcements are not made when development is started, but at the beginning of a (public) Beta. So it seems nothing is going to happen in the next future.

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46 minutes ago, Blende21 said:

This is probably one of the very basic decisions each management has to take: Where to allocate resources, viewing the current tasks at hand, plus the long term commitment that follows.

Probably the good explanations in this thread will ultimately lead to offer a solution to this quite relevant part of the worlds creative community. I believe it should be better served than today. But in the end, without knowing what is going on at the moment, nobody knows. It is quite normal in the software industry that announcements are not made when development is started, but at the beginning of a (public) Beta. So it seems nothing is going to happen in the next future.

Is there a new Beta release or so?

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On 6/16/2020 at 8:14 PM, Patrick Connor said:

@Hilmi Al-Kindy

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :) 

It is not fair to say we have decided not to undertake this work and simply have not said so, but that is an easy misapprehension to have given some of these threads. We also understand it must be frustrating for the software to look like it is suitable for your needs but in fact it is missing this vital functionality for that market segment. We try not to market to regions where sales are inappropriate, but social media and the internet make that very difficult to control.

We have said that we do absolutely want to add support for more complex text composition (as you know it is not as simple as RTL instead of LTR it is often mixed within a single sentence) and we know (and have admitted) that it will be some time before that is possible, mainly because the developers capable of this work are currently busy with other high priority features. Our company size (<100) does not restrict the employment process, it's just a matter of finding the right people. We would love to employ other experienced developers to speed up this important work to benefit the whole Affinity range.

No doubt someone will now rip that statement to pieces and hit me over the head with it, but it is written with good intentions of clarity because you seem to be making definitive statements that are not correct.

Thank you for clarifying, I apologize for my post if it has caused offense, I do understand that you are taking on a monumental task to create powerful software at an affordable price point. By the way, the fact that I have been using your products since 2008 tells you that I do have great respect for your products.

 

As to the guy who was asking why there isn't an application developed specifically for the Arabic community, once he finds an answer to that question he could probably also figure out why we are all considered third world economies and he can fix all our economic problems. To answer his question would involve delving in economic theory, geopolitics and good old fashioned righteous ranting. I believe all these are outside the scope of this forum.

Edited by Hilmi Al-Kindy
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Does your software support Arabic text (letters flow together according to predefined rules)?

On 6/16/2020 at 8:31 PM, amirgelman said:

Hey there!

just letting you know that me and my team might be your people.

ive sent you guys an email with a tutorial showing our app that fixes the RTL writing with a script.

to anyone who’s interested - check this out:

hopefully we could work together!

 

 

Edited by Hilmi Al-Kindy
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On 6/17/2020 at 7:56 PM, Hilmi Al-Kindy said:

As to the guy who was asking why there isn't an application developed specifically for the Arabic community, once he finds an answer to that question he could probably also figure out why we are all considered third world economies and he can fix all our economic problems. To answer his question would involve delving in economic theory, geopolitics and good old fashioned righteous ranting. I believe all these are outside the scope of this forum.

Different to physical production in agriculture or engineering, software is, because of its virtual, digital property, quite independent of a "world level" (1st, 2nd, 3rd), regional economy or politics and can be done from wherever with a sufficient amount of brain work + writing.

Finally it was the repeated mentioning of a number (~460 Mio) of possible customers plus promised success and often presented in a not just requesting but demanding, complaining, offending, insulting or aggressive way in the various forum threads of RTL requests, that made me ask the question.

If the application feature of RTL is felt as such essential as many posts made me believe, then it would be useful not to wait to get it delivered from any non-RTL people but just to create it, and to have it then.

So my concern is an empowerment or motivation: Become part of the process, instead of continuously criticising a lacking feature. Features will always be missing, an application will never be finished. Currently all 3 Affinity products do work in all worlds, regardless of writing systems. Whether RTL is essential or is just a feature of comfort to shorten cumbersome copy/paste workflows doesn't need to be answered globally. Like global Layers, global custom colour palettes, global scripting, footnotes, data merge and other so called 'MUST-have' features are still missing though they may attract more millions of customers in the future.

As long the bug forums aren't falling asleep some features may have to wait...

________________________________
Top ten most spoken languages:

844775305_RTL-toptenmostspokenlanguages.jpg.d763a9676791713fdacbcc856f4649d2.jpg
https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/ethnologue200

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Some Apple specifics for RTL and bidi writing etc.:

How Java deals with this:

On other systems like Windows, or certain third party GUI frameworks/libs which do offer various text input widgets etc. RTL/bidi writing it's similar treated.

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The issue is the text engine does not even put the mirrored text in the right order. Due to the nature of the RTL (Not so much Hebrew) where the letters are joined together, it makes it very complex. I am in the middle of Farsi/English book and I have long given up on APUB. It is really a shame that this was not thought through from the beginning of the development especially if Serif likes to offer alternatives to the likes of Adobe...

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19 minutes ago, Sam Neil said:

Due to the nature of the RTL (Not so much Hebrew) where the letters are joined together, it makes it very complex.

Which is presumably why @amirgelman responded to @Hilmi Al-Kindy’s question about Arabic text shaping by saying “I sent you a PM”. Even for Hebrew, I suspect it’s going to be necessary for the user to type the ‘sofit’ (word-final) forms of khaf, mem, nun, fey, and tsade, rather than leaving it to the software to make the appropriate substitutions where applicable.

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41 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Which is presumably why @amirgelman responded to @Hilmi Al-Kindy’s question about Arabic text shaping by saying “I sent you a PM”. Even for Hebrew, I suspect it’s going to be necessary for the user to type the ‘sofit’ (word-final) forms of khaf, mem, nun, fey, and tsade, rather than leaving it to the software to make the appropriate substitutions where applicable.

Yes, you are 100% correct.
except for the “Sofit” letters which makes no problems for us because they have dedicated keys in our keyboard.

In Arabic it’s different, and the whole thing about letters being joined into one is a new thing for me and my team. In Hebrew it matters not if the letter is the intro of a word, ends the word and especially if it is written after a specific other letter. Basically - each letter in Hebrew is that letter, no appearance change whatsoever.

BUT at the same time, my team and I know nothing about “giving up” nor do we wanna take any part in such way of thinking.

I believe our app will help out many people and not just with Affinity’s software.

which is why I’m trying to find a few Arabic speaking people (and hopefully some of the other RTL languages speakers) who could join in with this project.

And hey - if the person is by any chance a Python developer all the better!

if any of the people here can help out we would love to speak with you further via email:

support@artwayz.com

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