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Fix RTL for Arabic, Persian and Hebrew languages


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5 hours ago, grafika said:

Some script or language specific OpenType features must be enabled in the Typography panel: here it looks like the Medial Forms from the Contextual group were not enabled.

A good hint! I had another look and found enabled clicked 'Medial Forms' under the OpenType button. It's an improvement but it is still not usable:

230525428_Screenshot2021-05-15at12_39_40.png.a7014de15ea5328d67e67bba71077423.png

Well, this is a beta. And it certainly has some bugs. I have set the language of the text box several times, and the direction to RTL several times. It keeps losing these settings. The same goes for the Character Style palette - I've set the Script and language several times, but they are reset to Latin and English on clicking the same one line of text.

74329937_Screenshot2021-05-15at12_45_43.png.ee156310b47f83b85927c8259119f60c.png

Under the OpenType button, there is no way to tell which feature has been selected - there is no tick icon or anything like that.

423806306_Screenshot2021-05-15at12_46_38.png.c298be2a114881b2c156ad8a81f24e50.png

This is way to buggy to even consider usable at the moment.

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Would you mind to continue this workflow/bug discussion of VectorStyler in a separate thread – or even directly where it belongs to: https://www.vectorstyler.com/forum/

[This Affinity thread has a lot of followers which might get informed by email for every single of your forum posts.]

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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3 hours ago, thomaso said:

Would you mind to continue this workflow/bug discussion of VectorStyler in a separate thread

I hope that you are not being impertinent! Workflows related to Adobe should not be shown in here in comparison with Affinity according to your comment. And there are hundreds of those.

 

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I do take on board what thomaso wrote about this not being a forum for other software. It is relevant to compare other software and show snippets of how they work (or don't work) in comparison to the Affinity range, as many people do. But I think I've made my point clear enough that VectorStyler at present is not suitable for RTL text. I may look at it again in future. 

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  • Staff

@Zedd Gaming

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :) 

36 minutes ago, Zedd Gaming said:

Please fix it.

This is something Serif do want to support in the Affinity range, but unfortunately it is not a bug with a simple "fix". For this to be supported a lot of code needs to be written, as it requires support for mixed LTR and RTL in the same sentence to be properly useful, not just RTL for a whole sentence/paragraph. Sorry there is not better news on this at the moment.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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30 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

@Zedd Gaming

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :) 

This is something Serif do want to support in the Affinity range, but unfortunately it is not a bug with a simple "fix". For this to be supported a lot of code needs to be written, as it requires support for mixed LTR and RTL in the same sentence to be properly useful, not just RTL for a whole sentence/paragraph. Sorry there is not better news on this at the moment.

Funny, ArtWayz was able to build a third party tool (RTL Fixer) that brings RTL support for Affinity products. The app also support mix RTL and LTR. Ohh, and all that, in less than half a year. Are you sure Serif is working on that?

Edited by arikg
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They could sneak a peak at the source code of Scribus to work out the algorithms employed to provide such support in that package. Then refine the algorithms to as streamlined a form as they can before implementing their own interpretation in their own original source code.

They might actually be able to develop their own understanding by doing so.

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12 hours ago, ashf said:

It's already mentioned by others before, adapting to Harfbuzz may be the only solution to make Affinity true multilingual.
Adobe, Scribus, Inkscape or LibreOffice uses Harfbuzz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarfBuzz

HarfBuzz is not suitable by itself for a DTP application. The HarfBuzz authors themselves are clear about this.

See my comment, and a sample of text using produced using the HarfBuzz engine, here: 

 

 

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1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

HarfBuzz is not suitable by itself for a DTP application. The HarfBuzz authors themselves are clear about this.

See my comment, and a sample of text using produced using the HarfBuzz engine, here: 

Its suitable for Adobe, but not for Affinity?... Do you have a better option?

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6 minutes ago, klm.ny said:

Its suitable for Adobe, but not for Affinity?... Do you have a better option?

Adobe does not use HarfBuzz by default. It is a third-party add on which must be enabled:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/script-for-enabling-harfbuzz-workflow-in-indesign/m-p/11449397

Please read the information from the HarfBuzz authors: https://harfbuzz.github.io/what-harfbuzz-doesnt-do.html

Quote: "It is important to note that if you are implementing a complete text-layout engine you may have other responsibilities that HarfBuzz will not help you with" ...

So please don't it seem as easy as 'just use HarfBuzz'. It's not. Did you review the snippet I posted earlier? The kashidas produced in LibreOffce (which uses HarfBuzz) are unusable.

Affinity would need to write a full text engine to enable RTL, and not just use HarfBuzz.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/2/2019 at 3:13 PM, MEB said:

Hi Amr,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
As said in the original post this is something we do plan to implement but not in the short/medium term. There's still a lot of work in other areas that must be done first, sorry.

It has been over 2 years now. What about an update or an upgrade to solve the R to L issue? Other external apps do not do the work as an integration in the application itself. 

Thank you

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  • 4 weeks later...

YES! you can add Arabic text to affinity Photo or Affinity designer. This method used in photoshop as well when didn’t support Arabic text.

You can follow this video https://youtu.be/awEwjgMaokI 

Video steps given bellow:

1st. Download arabic font. I prefer https://arabicfonts.net

2nd. Imported to Affinity photo or Affinity designer by going to settings—> fonts—> choose cloud icon —> import your downloaded Arabic font.

3rd. Go to http://www.arabic-keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/   Site and type your arabic text and then you have copy option to copy it. Then go to affinity normally paste it in. Make sure to use that Arabic font in affinity app

 

 

Edited by Roj
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3 minutes ago, icomposer said:

@Roj

thank you... this method is ok for small projects. However, for creating/designing books or bigger projects affinity applications need to handle Arabic texts as native font integration and from R to L and so on...

There is no support for RTL paragraph. I am in the middle of a massive project and I have ended up to do a paragraph line by line. Unfortunately Affinity do not see the value of RTL and whatever you say falls on deaf ears..

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On 6/28/2021 at 2:02 PM, Sam Neil said:

Unfortunately Affinity do not see the value of RTL

If that were true there wouldn’t have been Middle East versions of some of the X5 ‘Plus’ applications. Unfortunately Serif had to rely on the help of a third party, which strongly suggests that they are unlikely to have the in-house expertise required to add RTL capability to the Affinity apps.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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2 hours ago, Alfred said:

Unfortunately Serif had to rely on the help of a third party

That is by far the best way given your suggestion about the lack of knowledge of RTL with in-house devs. Adobe did exactly the same for the ME versions of their apps. It is 100% clear that since they brought the development in-house the pace of development for RTL (particularly Arabic and derivative alphabets) has slowed.

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On 7/1/2021 at 3:22 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

That is by far the best way given your suggestion about the lack of knowledge of RTL with in-house devs.

Agreed. What was unfortunate about the reliance on outside help is that their cooperation didn’t last.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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