P: Random "Right to Left" Text Glitch

Hi David,

I checked and the UI Language control in Preferences is set to "English". New documents are L2R. When creating a new document, I see that it is working in L2R: characters and punctuation appearing on the right as expected, cursor is on the right. At some point in editing my document, the directionality changes to R2L, but not of my doing. I never touch or change Language Options except to fix the directionality back to L2R.

Hi Blackthorn,

What you are describing is PRECISELY the behavior of your ALIGNMENT being Left (what English-speakers also call Justification) but your DIRECTIONALITY being Right2Left.  Your step #5 is the smoking gun.  That's how it works when you've set your Directionality to R2L but then tried to override it with an Alignment of Left.  You need to go through the steps I outlined, above.  Specifically -- activate the MENA composer and view the Middle Eastern Features, then specifically make sure both your Directionality AND your Alignment are L2R.  Please note that the Directionality control is NOT visible unless you're using the MENA composer AND you have specifically activated the Middle Eastern features under Type > Language Option.  Further, Directionality and Alignment are two distinct settings; it might appear that changing one changes both, but you need to first fix Directionality and THEN fix Alignment.  Check out my video if you want me to walk you through it, step-by-step: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfuw7m5mVTk

There's pretty much only one other way for this to get broken the way you are describing -- what language-version of Photoshop are you running?  I ask, because the Arabic-enabled English (and French) versions as well as the Hebrew-enabled English version DEFAULT to R2L -- which means any time you reset your prefs, you're back to R2L.  How can you tell?  Click Preferences (under Edit on Windows and Photoshop on Mac) > Interface and look about half way down the dialog at the UI Language control.  If it says anything other than just "English", you need to install the US (or International) version of English to get the settings you want.  This can be done by going to your Creative Cloud app, clicking the gear-shaped icon at the upper right, select Preferences, and then in the dialog click Creative Cloud at the top, and then Apps.  Go down to App Language and select the flavor of English (or whatever language) you want.  Go back and you'll see in the middle of the window "You have not installed any applications yet     Browse all Adobe apps below".  Choose one (like Photoshop!) and click the Install button.

Thanks,
David

Hi David,

Thank you for the quick reply.

I'm experiencing this issue quite regularly, but not under the scenarios you mentioned, which is why I believe it must be a bug. Here's my typical workflow where I am encountering this issue:

1. Create brand new document
2. Go about designing as normal, eventually creating some text elements
3. Text element, eg, point text, is working as expected -- I type in some text; it is left justified, all is good
4. I continue working on the document
5. Later on I go back to edit the text, I type in some letters and it seems okay (new letters appearing on the right) but I notice the cursor stays on the left and doesn't move from there
6. I type in a punctuation and it shows up on the left, at which point I realize Photoshop has gone into R2L mode for no apparent reason
7. I fix the issue by going through the process in the original post, and repeat

I can't recall if this only happens to point text or paragraph text, or both; but I confirm that this is happening on NEW documents where it is L2R by default and text is left justified, then switching to R2L randomly at some point.

Howdy,

There are a couple of things here.

First, Photoshop remembers what composer was used to create a given document and it maintains the use of that composer afterwards.  So if you're in the European/CJK composer but you open a document that was created with MENA, even though the UI doesn't change, the composer does.

Next, Photoshop remembers the last typographic settings used in a document and those are the default the next time you open a document.  This, unfortunately, means that if you were in a R2L doc last, even if your composer is set to Europe/CJK, you can find yourself typing right to left, because that was the last paragraph setting you used.

If you're not typing in Arabic, Hebrew, or Persian, and you do not otherwise reset your paragraph directionality, then you should always remain L2R, regardless of which composer you are using.  A good alternate to make sure you're always entering text in the correct direction (which is DIFFERENT than alignment!) would be to activate the MENA composer and view the Middle Eastern Features, then specifically make sure both your directionality AND your alignment are L2R.

Hope that helps -- feel free to ping me here if you've got follow-up questions.

Thanks,
David