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Inspiring
Mar 18, 2009 9:52 PM UTC
Answered

Arabic support in what sense?

Hi All,
I see the Text Layout Framework support Arabic language. I wonder what does it mean, displaying the language? But I see that when i put Arabic text to a TextField, i also see it readable. Can anybody explain advantages of Text Layout Framework over the traditional one in this sense?

Thanks

-Hoang Long
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brian_thomas2
brian_thomas2Correct answer
Adobe Employee
Mar 19, 2009 12:26 AM UTC
Hi Hoang,

One of the most important Arabic-related features is full support for right to left and bidirectional text. All of TLF's features (Selection, editing and flowing text across multiple columns and linked containers, and around inline images, etc..) can be used in the right to left case.

7 replies

texttileAuthor
Inspiring
Mar 21, 2009 12:12 AM UTC
thank you, thank you for your kind support
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texttileAuthor
Inspiring
Mar 21, 2009 12:11 AM UTC
you're right. And we can see the differences much easier if we understand Arabic language. If the text is not in Arabic, or Arabic font, then Text Layout Framework will treat it as normal reading. This automatic setting made me sometimes hard to figure out the differences.
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Adobe Employee
Mar 19, 2009 10:26 PM UTC
Another place to look is what it looks like when you embed a font. When you are using TextField with device fonts, you are getting the rendering that's supplied by the underlying platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) which may be doing glyph substitution & reordering for you or not. With embedded fonts it could be quite far off. And there were also problems when you started selecting. I'd suggest writing a small application that allows you to type a string, and then displays it using TextField and using TLF side by side in various different fonts for purposes of comparison if you want to know more.
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texttileAuthor
Inspiring
Mar 19, 2009 4:31 PM UTC
hmmm,,,the differences can be seen if we create a table. In case of arabic reading, the order of column is inverse with the normal left to right reading. But the character is still displayed as is except date. When i tested with a normal TextField, it works well with Arabic ;) It means that the earlier version also support Arabic language. Do you agree?
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texttileAuthor
Inspiring
Mar 19, 2009 9:03 AM UTC
Thank you for your response. But it seems like no more than right alignment. You can check out this example so we can understand more accurately: In the example, what we see is obviously right alignment. Even when i used MS Office with right alignment setting, then when i typed text in, its behavior was exactly the same in the example.

http://corlan.org/downloads/examples/tlf/example_text_layout_famework.html

So infact, the term "LTF or RTL direction" is just a new term but the same traditional concept left and right alignment.
Do you have any specific example (include source code if possible) that provides more than the "right" alignment, or "justify" alignment as in above example,...

Bests,

-Hoang Long
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brian_thomas2
Adobe Employee
Adobe Employee
Mar 20, 2009 5:37 PM UTC
When using right to left support with left to right text, it very much appears than it is the same thing as right alignment. Try using Arabic text and setting the direction to right to left. You will notice that the text will actually flow in the opposite direction. The differences are especially obvious if you combine RTL and LTR text.

Also check out the editor demo and try loading bidi.xml to see this at work.
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brian_thomas2
Adobe Employee
brian_thomas2Correct answer
Adobe Employee
Mar 19, 2009 12:26 AM UTC
Hi Hoang,

One of the most important Arabic-related features is full support for right to left and bidirectional text. All of TLF's features (Selection, editing and flowing text across multiple columns and linked containers, and around inline images, etc..) can be used in the right to left case.
Translate