Right to Left languages and fonts

Hello,

I briefly tried to copy/paste, read from file, some Hebrew text. I
simply get some strange characters.

 From a brief search of the archives. I did not find any means of doing
a right to left language. I also am not sure how to use a Hebrew font.
Font issues would also apply for when I want to use Greek.

What would be needed to do right to left and use the right Hebrew font?

I believe these issues would also apply to anyone wanting Arabic or any
other such languages.

The last message I can easily find is in August of 2014. Maybe Pharo
isn't the right tool for this job at the moment. But I did want to
explore the potential of it being so.

Thanks for any help.

Jimmie

Hi Jimmy,

AFAIK there’s no IDE support for RTL languages. You only want to be able to display the strings correctly though, right?

I’m pretty sure that it’s already possible to load the font. The problem is probably with the editors and workspaces. They would need to be told to display the string differently.


Cheers,
Max

For myself and my goals. Yes, I only want to display RTL language and in
its one container. I do not know if that is the appropriate GUI
terminology.

I am wanting to do some textual comparison of Hebrew, Greek and English
texts. Other languages later. They will each need to be synced with each
other by either row by row (line by line) or with text in columns. Each
language in its own row or column depending on the desired view.

I will want to edit each language appropriately in its container.

IDE or workspace/playground support is not required at this time.

Is it reasonably achieve this in a Pharo app using the latest Pharo GUI,
GT, Spec, Bloc, Brick, ...?

If so, then I will start learning and get going. If not I will look
elsewhere for accomplishing this project. But Pharo is my first choice.
I would love to not have to move to Qt or JavaFX or some such.

Thanks.

Jimmie



On 01/11/2016 09:06 AM, Max Leske wrote:

Jimmy,

Okay. Thanks for the help.

I do not have that particular font. I am on Ubuntu. But it appears that the standard Arial does have a version of Hebrew glyphs.

It took me a couple of tries to get it to work. I had to close the Playground I had open as it remained in the original font. But when I inspected the string. The inspector displayed the correct fonts. After I changed fonts and opened a new Playground. The new Playground displayed Hebrew and Greek correctly. I would presume when I develop the user interface I can select whichever Hebrew or Greek font I want to display in that UI element?

It does render them in reverse order. But I would think that I can take care of that in my GUI display element. It is challenging to display RTL and LTR languages together. When I do so in LibreOffice it is a strange experience as to which direction the cursor is operating. :)

Again thanks.

I am encouraged to proceed. :)

Jimmie Houchin

Jimmy,

Use the right font, for example Ariel Unicode MS, and you'll be able to display strings in those languages just fine. Processing these strings also works just fine.

[snip image of screenshot with settings browser]

Now, editing them right-to-left is not possible.

Sven

On 11 Jan 2016, at 15:50, Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello,

I briefly tried to copy/paste, read from file, some Hebrew text. I simply get some strange characters.

From a brief search of the archives. I did not find any means of doing a right to left language. I also am not sure how to use a Hebrew font. Font issues would also apply for when I want to use Greek.

What would be needed to do right to left and use the right Hebrew font?

I believe these issues would also apply to anyone wanting Arabic or any other such languages.

The last message I can easily find is in August of 2014. Maybe Pharo isn't the right tool for this job at the moment. But I did want to explore the potential of it being so.

Thanks for any help.

Jimmie

> On 11 Jan 2016, at 17:18, Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Okay. Thanks for the help.
>
> I do not have that particular font. I am on Ubuntu. But it appears that the standard Arial does have a version of Hebrew glyphs.
>
> It took me a couple of tries to get it to work. I had to close the Playground I had open as it remained in the original font. But when I inspected the string. The inspector displayed the correct fonts. After I changed fonts and opened a new Playground. The new Playground displayed Hebrew and Greek correctly. I would presume when I develop the user interface I can select whichever Hebrew or Greek font I want to display in that UI element?

Any font that contains the necessary glyphs and that is usable in Pharo will do.

> It does render them in reverse order. But I would think that I can take care of that in my GUI display element. It is challenging to display RTL and LTR languages together.

Well I didn't notice the reversal. I just copied some text from Wikipedia. It seems that what is actually the first character in a string should be displayed last. We have no provision for that it seems. Maybe just reversing the string will do, I don't know.

I don't know Hebrew at all, but there seems to be something strange with the marks between the main letters too (in the font that I used).

> When I do so in LibreOffice it is a strange experience as to which direction the cursor is operating. :)

Editing (which includes cursor movement) is truly challenging, as is layout.

> Again thanks.
>
> I am encouraged to proceed. :)

Please do.

Hello,

In a brief exploration. I may look more later. But the Linux Libertine font has a reasonably nice Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and to my understanding many others, set of characters. I like them much better than the original Ariel which I used. The Ariel on Linux is not the Ariel Unicode MS. They may be nearly identical, but I don't know as I have not seen the MS font.

Thanks again.

Jimmie

Jimmy,

Use the right font, for example Ariel Unicode MS, and you'll be able to display strings in those languages just fine. Processing these strings also works just fine.

[Snip screenshot, see original message]

Now, editing them right-to-left is not possible.

Sven

On 11 Jan 2016, at 15:50, Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello,

I briefly tried to copy/paste, read from file, some Hebrew text. I simply get some strange characters.

From a brief search of the archives. I did not find any means of doing a right to left language. I also am not sure how to use a Hebrew font. Font issues would also apply for when I want to use Greek.

What would be needed to do right to left and use the right Hebrew font?

I believe these issues would also apply to anyone wanting Arabic or any other such languages.

The last message I can easily find is in August of 2014. Maybe Pharo isn't the right tool for this job at the moment. But I did want to explore the potential of it being so.

Thanks for any help.

Jimmie