arabic script

[Phil Davis]

Hi Monte,

Monte Goulding wrote:
>>>> Hmm... I'm just guessing but I think I'd need a work around to 
>>>> handle the fact that right to left scripts aren't supported. At 
>>>> least that's what it says in the docs. As I don't know Arabic I 
>>>> thought asking here might help but perhaps no-one has bumped into 
>>>> this limitation yet?
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Monte
>>
>> I maintain & further develop a training system I built for a client 
>> starting in 2003. It allows Arabic (or any RTL language) to be pasted 
>> into fields but not typed in. The reason for no typing is no engine 
>> support for RTL typing.
>
> OK, no typing could be a blocker for us. Did you try setting selecting 
> before the first char to move the cursor to the left as the user was 
> typing?

No I didn't - good idea.
>>
>>
>> During the paste process my code reverses the character order, gets 
>> the html entity code of each char, and sets the htmlText of the 
>> target field to the reversed string of entities. Also there is some 
>> unicode business thrown in along the way, but I don't remember those 
>> details at the moment.
>
> So how do you handle text wrapping or do you avoid it?

We avoided it by requiring that line breaks be inserted during editing 
in the RTL text editor before pasting the text into our app. I find this 
approach very clunky and unnatural-feeling, but it's the direction we 
went. I suppose you could check the formattedHeight of the field after 
each keystroke to detect wrapping.

I expect to be improving my app's RTL text feature in the future, so any 
good approaches I can add to my existing hindsight observations will be 
greatly appreciated!

>>
>>
>> If there is a simpler way to do this, I would love to hear about it.
>
> Me too.

Bug #8146 describes this issue.
-- 
Phil Davis

PDS Labs
Professional Software Development
http://pdslabs.net