Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Fix RTL for Arabic, Persian and Hebrew languages


Recommended Posts

On 7/1/2021 at 1:02 PM, Alfred said:

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.

Well what is stopping Serif? They have enough loyal users such as myself to give a hand in anyway that we can. What is the issue? development/technical or RTL user input? Sadly they have been very vague about it, citing simply no plans yet. This is discouraging and not helpful. If a proper explanation is given, perhaps repeated questions such as the one in this thread would not pop up again and again...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Sam Neil said:

What is the issue? development/technical or RTL user input?

As far as I’m aware, it was purely the development/technical side of things. WinSoft International created custom versions of PagePlus and two other Serif applications that allowed the user to work in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and a couple of other RTL languages, but their agreement only covered the X5 versions and wasn’t extended beyond that.

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)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Alfred said:

As far as I’m aware, it was purely the development/technical side of things. WinSoft International created custom versions of PagePlus and two other Serif applications that allowed the user to work in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and a couple of other RTL languages, but their agreement only covered the X5 versions and wasn’t extended beyond that.

I see. Cheers for that Alfred. At least that's a bit more helpful to know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The technical side of creating a RTL text engine should not be understated - it is a far more difficult process for alphabets with cursive characters than it is for separate Latin letters. One of the features I would be looking for in RTL Arabic/Persian would be tatweels and kashidas. Let's say you add a kashida to a simple word, how will your spell checker handle it? Or the search function in a PDF export?

I'm posting a link to a long article which explains in depth some of the problems with handling RTL text: https://research.reading.ac.uk/typoarabic/on-arabic-justification-part-2-software-implementations/.

Affinity would have to find and hire developers who intricately know and understand RTL to do this. That alone would immediately exclude about 90% plus of all developers in the UK, and probably more like 99%, as it is a specialist field. There's a reason why WinSoft exists...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Has Serif promised RTL support sometime? To my knowledge no. So why should they give arguments why they don't work on features never promised?

Mac mini M1 / Ryzen 5600H & RTX3050 mobile / iPad Pro 1st - all with latest non beta release of Affinity

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I don't think they have promised, but they have said they would like to do it: 

 

I see. I feel the pain. I would love to have full japanese support in it but I know that this will not come soon even with it being lots easier to implement than full cursive arabic.

Mac mini M1 / Ryzen 5600H & RTX3050 mobile / iPad Pro 1st - all with latest non beta release of Affinity

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

All other have it? InDesign and Xpress have it - as addons and far from perfect. 

It’s sadly a fact that cursive Arabian and Hebrew is very hard to typeset. Serif is to small a company to sink their resources in that feature. 

Not because they don’t care but because the needed work probably stands in no good relation to the additional income it would produce. 

Mac mini M1 / Ryzen 5600H & RTX3050 mobile / iPad Pro 1st - all with latest non beta release of Affinity

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On 7/5/2020 at 9:08 AM, VAQARSHA said:

@Sam Neil and @thomaso This is for both of you. First write something in the MS Word then make a copy and apply the same paste special method. Sam Neil I have used your reference lalezar font and its working in both the Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo. And if there is no paste special option it could probably be the older version.1166354642_LalezarFont.thumb.png.fc109ac682097ed7c5b619075cde0e6b.png

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

ممكن تجربوا الصفحة اللاي تحت دي فيها حركة تشغل العربي 

you can check this page will solve Arabic issues

Ahmed ezz

Egypt

http://www.arabic-keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
39 minutes ago, Tia Lapis said:

Ah I see, so Calcutta was renamed, too.

Just spelled differently, I remember when Beijing was spelled Peking. Rename is Berlin, Ontario to Kitchener Ontario.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Rename is Berlin, Ontario to Kitchener Ontario.

Had never heard of that one; thanks.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Just spelled differently, I remember when Beijing was spelled Peking. Rename is Berlin, Ontario to Kitchener Ontario.

Kolkata is just Calcutta spelled differently, but when Beijing was romanized as Peking or Peiping it was pronounced differently, too. (Beijing should be pronounced ‘bay-JING’ but it’s often mispronounced as ‘bay-ZHING’.)

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)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, coral said:

Thanks. There is a Python project called Arabic Resharper for this problem.

Affnity Development Team can review these codes and maybe learn how to fix this problem.

Don't think Affinity suite was written in Python, RTL and Indic languages will not be supported. So it is best not to post about this topic as you would be whistling into the wind... Stick to your software.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Tia Lapis said:

Hmm Kolkata and Calcutta are pronounced very differently, too...

From the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary:

Kolkata /kɒlˈkʌtə/
Calcutta /kælˈkʌtə/

In other words, only the first vowel sound is slightly different.

 

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)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.