Displaying Arabic Text in Xara

[Tabvla]

I am hoping that one of the Forum Members may be able to help me with the way Xara displays Arabic. To understand my questions it may be helpful if you looked at the attached JPEG file which contains the words "one" though "nine". I do understand that words in Arabic are written from Right to Left, therefore, in Arabic, I would expect "one" to be on the Right and "nine" to be on the Left.

If you look at the attached image, at the top is a screenshot of the Arabic taken from an online translation service. This I would assume would be perfectly correct and to me it looks correct, because "one" is on the Right and "nine" is on the Left.

However, if you Copy & Paste the Arabic into Xara then it appears as if Xara "flips" the entire line of text so that (as I understand it) it now reads "one" on the Left and "nine" on the Right. That to me looks wrong, but I am not entirely sure.

Also, if you use different Fonts the presentation of the Arabic changes quite significantly. I am uncertain as to which Font most accurately displays the Arabic.

QUESTIONS

1. Does Xara "flip" the Arabic text when it is brought into Xara via "Copy & Paste" ?

2. If Xara does "flip" the text does a manual "Select > Flip Horizontally" rectify the text and is it now correct ?

3. To keep the presentation of the Arabic text as correct as possible, which Font should one use ?

TiA

T.

[alilister]

Any use?

http://www.madinaharabic.com/forum/a...x.php?t-3.html

[Luke.Hart]

Xtreme does not handle Arabic correctly. The paste operation just takes the unicode values of the characters from the clipdoard (which are stored in reading order). Since Xtreme has no handling of Right-to-left languages and doesn't know how to render the correct glyph for the context of each code-point (intial, medial, etc.), it renders the characters in isolated form in reading order. This is a known deficiency and has been discussed a number of times on this forum (http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=40216, http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=36341)

[Tabvla]

Alilister, thanks for the link. I will follow it up.

Luke, thanks for your reply and the links to the other threads, which I have now read.

Obviously no "easy" way of doing this in Xara.... but then I am very resourceful, so if I find some way to do this correctly I will post back to the Forum.

T.

[rami]

hi i bout this product becouse its good but the arabic typiung is so rong as i see you not working hard for your customers the way you answer them here
please how can i take bake what i paid for web 6
i need it this product for arabic
if no saupport for arabic i dont need it
thanks please reply
important
rami

[ad1066]

This forum isn't hosted by Xara themselves, it's run by regular users of the product. If you're looking for a refund, it would probably be best to contact Xara directly via their website.

-- Ben

[aboammar]

It has been over 18 years with so many versions of Xara software, yet and until now with the current version, Xara Designer Pro 7, still no support for Arabic texts!!!! Do you guys know why? Is it difficult, or costly? No, none of that .. it is just because Xara team does NOT care about Arabic support .. they never did, and never will!!

I started using Xara since 1995, and have upgraded to almost every version, though I never realy needed the upgrades, but was hoping that my support will help Xara team appreciate us Arabic users, and maybe they will add Arabic support one day!! Will, I was very stupid to believe that, so I am done supporting this stupid software .. no more upgrades until Arabic is supported!!

And Xara team should feel ashamed of themselves ... I mean there are tens of graphic software’s that support Arabic .. many of them are free, and most of them are cheaper than Xara!!!

[gwpriester]

Programming any language that reads from right to left is very difficult.

Believe me, if this were an easy thing to do, it would have been done a long time ago.

Your point about the huge market is valid. But unlike Adobe and Apple and Microsoft and Google, which are huge companies with huge staffs and resources, Xara/Magix is a relatively small company with a limited number of programmers. So they have to focus on their primary market, which is European and American countries with languages that read from left to right.

This has nothing to do with liking or disliking people from Arab countries, the Chinese, the Japanese, and other countries where languages read from right to left.

[gwpriester]

OK. I have delete the contentious part of this thread.

Please keep your posts civil or do not post at all.