Fix RTL for Arabic, Persian and Hebrew languages

[Sam Neil]

7 minutes ago, VAQARSHA said:

You cannot type in Arabic, Hindi or Urdu, but there is a way to do it. Type any thing in MS Word copy the text go to Edit > Paste Special in Affinity and select "Enhanced Windows Metafile". Hope that should solve your problem for the time being.

Last time I tried it did not work as it mirrors the letters that make up the work - so you can use a site like this http://www.arabic-keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/

which mirrors the letters to be pasted in the right order but Affinity still ignores it. This is the same with the veteran Serif Page Plus.  

[VAQARSHA]

@Sam Neil  Sir, I used this technique a few minutes ago in the latest version 1.8.3.641 and its working like a charm. Here you can see the picture.

[Sam Neil]

ummm let me try...

[Sam Neil]

@VAQARSHA I don't have Designer on this Mac but trying it on Photo, as you can see the top line is the native to AP but using a website that reverses the text, produces such result. Note I am using LALEZAR font which is a google font (This project is Farsi but should not make a difference).

[thomaso]

19 hours ago, VAQARSHA said:

Edit > Paste Special in Affinity and select "Enhanced Windows Metafile"

Can you show screenshots of this workflow? Might it be a feature in Windows only?

The menu entry "Paste Special" doesn't occur in the macOS version of Affinity. This are my options with Arabic RTL text in the clipboard:

[VAQARSHA]

@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.

Edited July 5, 2020 by VAQARSHA

[Alfred]

42 minutes ago, 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.

As a Mac user, @thomaso doesn’t have access to a ‘Paste Special’ command (and even if he did, I’d be very surprised if Apple offered ‘Enhanced Windows Metafile’ as an option).

[VAQARSHA]

@Alfred Well that's another downside of MacOS. It's very sad that the user always suffers because of these OS conflicts.

[Sam Neil]

On 7/5/2020 at 9:55 AM, VAQARSHA said:

@Alfred Well that's another downside of MacOS. It's very sad that the user always suffers because of these OS conflicts.

Well Thank you for that. I am normally on Windows anyway and I shall be for my Farsi project I will use your tip! But agreed such a shame MAC does not have this feature!

[YoramS]

On 6/28/2019 at 3:00 AM, fde101 said:

This is not a bug.  It is a feature that does not yet exist.

 

On 6/28/2019 at 3:00 AM, fde101 said:

This is not a bug.  It is a feature that does not yet exist.

It's 20 lines of code (at least in Windows)  

I saw an Israeli company has created and selling a software that does it on MAC 

I think Serif is missing out on A LOT of potential customer by not even exploring this ... it is really NOT A BIG Deal to code 

It's a low hanging fruit that is being missed here 

 

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @YoramS.

30 minutes ago, YoramS said:

I saw an Israeli company has created and selling a software that does it on MAC

If “it” refers to reversing Hebrew letters then it’s very straightforward, but for other RTL languages there are contextual rules for character shaping.

[weby]

47 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @YoramS.

If “it” refers to reversing Hebrew letters then it’s very straightforward, but for other RTL languages there are contextual rules for character shaping.

So if Hebrew is easy to implement, why not starting with Hebrew?

[amirgelman]

11 minutes ago, weby said:

So if Hebrew is easy to implement, why not starting with Hebrew?

11 minutes ago, weby said:

So if Hebrew is easy to implement, why not starting with Hebrew?

Hey,

Amir, CEO of ArtWayz.com.
As stated before - we're working on our app: Right-to-Left Fixer.

I can tell you that Hebrew works amazingly and I'm using it flawlessly on my Mac and Windows computers.

Check this video for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgrnV4d5rUs

 

However, we do want to make sure the app works on Arabic too which honestly - makes things a bit more complicated, but not impossible.

 

Can't wait to show you guys what we've worked on.

Check out our app page and register to be notified once the app is out:

https://www.artwayz.com/en/right-to-left-fix/

 

Stay tuned for updates!

[weby]

Sir, your app is nice, but we need native RTL support.

[amirgelman]

Just now, weby said:

Sir, your app is nice, but we need native RTL support.

Understood.

But if we were to translate the situation, taking into account what Serif themselves has already stated number of times - this will not be happening anytime soon.

 

I can tell you I've personally contacted them with offers to collaborate on making RTL happen on Affinity.

I've yet to get any response from them and this is (probably) due to the fact that they are simply NOT focused on this right now.

 

They have their reasons which is why we must look elsewhere for options.

That's when the idea for our app came.

[fde101]

9 hours ago, YoramS said:

It's 20 lines of code (at least in Windows)  

Perhaps if using the native text engine of the platform.

Serif created their own text engine to use in the Affinity products and it is much more complicated to build something like this up from scratch, when you can't use existing functionality of the OS.

[fde101]

On 7/5/2020 at 3:50 AM, Alfred said:

if Apple offered ‘Enhanced Windows Metafile’

On the Mac this would most likely be PDF instead.  Prior to MacOS X it would have been PICT.

 

I believe the whole "Paste Special" thing under Windows is to handle different formats of data on the clipboard or to handle different ways to paste/embed that data.  On a Mac there is rarely any need for this to be specified manually, and in cases in which this would actually be valuable to specify, the options would more commonly be broken out into separate menu items instead.  Some of the Microsoft applications for the Mac evidently do have a "Paste Special" option based on some quick search results, but this is an exception rather than the rule, with most "real" Mac applications providing similar functionality in some other way.

[YoramS]

16 hours ago, Alfred said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @YoramS.

If “it” refers to reversing Hebrew letters then it’s very straightforward, but for other RTL languages there are contextual rules for character shaping.

Ok go at enough... but  I would argue that for photo and designer you could make a simple flag (check box) and whenever a character is types you can send that character and a HOME KEYUP which should basically allow you to type you characters in a way that the contextual stuff should take care of itself.

This will NOT work for pasting texts from other sources though.

And for those who still want to use the current version  ... there are free workarounds like using a website like:

http://spellbackwards.com/

Or

https://www.binarytranslator.com/reverse-text-generator

If these don't work well with Arabic ( did not test as I don't have Arabic fonts on my machine) ... you can try this for Windows

https://download.cnet.com/Arabic-Text-Reverser/3000-2351_4-75616595.html

 

 

[Sam Neil]

18 hours ago, amirgelman said:

Understood.

But if we were to translate the situation, taking into account what Serif themselves has already stated number of times - this will not be happening anytime soon.

 

I can tell you I've personally contacted them with offers to collaborate on making RTL happen on Affinity.

I've yet to get any response from them and this is (probably) due to the fact that they are simply NOT focused on this right now.

 

They have their reasons which is why we must look elsewhere for options.

That's when the idea for our app came.

This is such a shame as Serif are shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring the RTL users. I have personally signed up for your app... So let's see Amir...

[thomaso]

19 hours ago, amirgelman said:

19 hours ago, weby said:

So if Hebrew is easy to implement, why not starting with Hebrew?

Hey,

Amir, CEO of ArtWayz.com.
As stated before - we're working on our app: Right-to-Left Fixer.

I can tell you that Hebrew works amazingly and I'm using it flawlessly on my Mac and Windows computers.

Check this video for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgrnV4d5rUs

Amir, your various announcements seem someway confusing. On one hand it sounds + looks as if the app is finished to work for Hebrew text, in the video you even say "support us by buying the app". But there appears not to exist a link for buying it, instead you still post the known link which makes announcements and collects email addresses.

When I consider that you initially started already with ...

• "Right-to-Left support is here!
  AMAZING NEWS to all of you want full right-to-left support for all Affinity software."

... and continued yesterday ...

• Hebrew works amazingly and I'm using it flawlessly

... then your various announcements, the promises, the invitation to buy and the request for e-mail addresses appear somewhat strange overall. - Is it just me?

[amirgelman]

16 hours ago, thomaso said:

Amir, your various announcements seem someway confusing. On one hand it sounds + looks as if the app is finished to work for Hebrew text, in the video you even say "support us by buying the app". But there appears not to exist a link for buying it, instead you still post the known link which makes announcements and collects email addresses.

When I consider that you initially started already with ...

• "Right-to-Left support is here!
  AMAZING NEWS to all of you want full right-to-left support for all Affinity software."

... and continued yesterday ...

• Hebrew works amazingly and I'm using it flawlessly

... then your various announcements, the promises, the invitation to buy and the request for e-mail addresses appear somewhat strange overall. - Is it just me?

Hey.

So here’s what’s going on in a nutshell:

Basically - we first made it possible to write in Hebrew and we did, and it works.

What we didn’t take into account was that Arabic language has much more complication.

They have letters joined in with other letters and that combined-letter has dependency on whether it’s in the beginning, middle or end of the word.

At first we thought about releasomg just a Hebrew version in the meanwhile and that idea is still on the table.

However - I’m afraid of the app being perceived as a Hebrew-exclusive workaround which is not fine, as we want at the very least - support in both Arabic and Hebrew.

We currently work constantly on making everything work with Arabic and that’s pretty much where this stands right now. 
 

That’s why we are looking for Arabic users of Affinity to help us test out.

btw: if anyone is interested - please send us an email: info@artwayz.com

Hopefully this is a good enough explanation.

[Sam Neil]

16 minutes ago, amirgelman said:

Hey.

So here’s what’s going on in a nutshell:

Basically - we first made it possible to write in Hebrew and we did, and it works.

What we didn’t take into account was that Arabic language has much more complication.

They have letters joined in with other letters and that combined-letter has dependency on whether it’s in the beginning, middle or end of the word.

At first we thought about releasomg just a Hebrew version in the meanwhile and that idea is still on the table.

However - I’m afraid of the app being perceived as a Hebrew-exclusive workaround which is not fine, as we want at the very least - support in both Arabic and Hebrew.

We currently work constantly on making everything work with Arabic and that’s pretty much where this stands right now. 
 

That’s why we are looking for Arabic users of Affinity to help us test out.

btw: if anyone is interested - please send us an email: info@artwayz.com

Hopefully this is a good enough explanation.

Amir - I can certainly test with Farsi which is more or less the same as Arabic... You should have my details in the sign up from your website.

[amirgelman]

9 minutes ago, Sam Neil said:

Amir - I can certainly test with Farsi which is more or less the same as Arabic... You should have my details in the sign up from your website.

Thank you.

Yes, that would very much help.

Sending you an email right now.

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, amirgelman said:

Basically - we first made it possible to write in Hebrew and we did, and it works. What we didn’t take into account was that Arabic language has much more complication. (...)
I’m afraid of the app being perceived as a Hebrew-exclusive workaround which is not fine, as we want at the very least - support in both Arabic and Hebrew. (...)
That’s why we are looking for Arabic users of Affinity to help us test out. (...)

Thank you. So it appears you currently feel a similar situation as Serif does with their idea to have the feature complete, probably including the entire app UI, before publishing it. Nevertheless the current state of your app could be helpful for some users already. Selling it to those might not only satisfy them but also generate feedback for improvements which may be useful for other app languages, too.

As mentioned earlier you might contact Arabic programmers in the open source community, e.g. https://github.com/topics/arabic-language
And, for instance, here is the public contact to an Arabic speaking person with experience in Affinity software (besides various design software): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj-qfk2rJtsY_gMgD97euWw/about

[amirgelman]

22 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Thank you. So it appears you currently feel a similar situation as Serif does with their idea to have the feature complete, probably including the entire app UI, before publishing it. Nevertheless the current state of your app could be helpful for some users already. Selling it to those might not only satisfy them but also generate feedback for improvements which may be useful for other app languages, too.

As mentioned earlier you might contact Arabic programmers in the open source community, e.g. https://github.com/topics/arabic-language
And, for instance, here is the public contact to an Arabic speaking person with experience in Affinity software (besides various design software): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj-qfk2rJtsY_gMgD97euWw/about

Appreciate those links and the tip.

Yes, the more we advance we understand we should release the app as it is.

Updates soon.

Thanks again.