Adobe and Arabic/Hebrew text copy and paste punctuation

Question

Alright, let's add another one to the wall, but this mostly serves as a warning to those of you who are googling this for yourself and finding out that the dumb solution that Adobe has come up with is to install the Middle Eastern versions of the software from scratch. I guess this is more of a plea to Adobe:

Adobe, if you've already hidden the Middle Eastern/Asian text option and put it in the preferences menu, then maybe folks would like the two paragraph options that allow you to switch the direction of the text and help with the punctuation. I don't believe they would be confused if they are actively seeking it out. Why is your current solution for this problem: I need to reinstall the whole program for two buttons? TWO BUTTONS. That's all we're asking for. You already have them in another version of the same software, so we know it works! I don't deal with the spaghetti code that is Adobe products, but who decided that adding in one option, but not the one that makes it work, and made it utterly useless besides only pasting text? I just want a stupid period to go to the end of an Arabic sentence. Now I get to add it in manually. Thanks Adobe.

--

For those of you googling this:

The solution currently is to uninstall Illustrator, go to creative cloud, hit the three dots next to Illustrator, click "Other Versions" and install the Middle Eastern version of the software. This used to be available in 2017 as a default option (from my google-fu), now it is locked behind another version. Chew on that.

Zaid Al Hilali · Answer

In the past, with old Adobe Text engines, we used to have issues when opening a document that was created in the Middle Eastern version, opening it in English Illustrator will flip numbers especially if they have decimals, and the punctuations will show on the wrong end of the line.

I'm not defending Adobe here, but it is better to separate Language-specific features from the most used English version so you don't need to see Japanese, or Arabic-specific options and tools. Who knows, with current excellent Text engines, Adobe may provide extra RTL tools in the English version.

@valencygraphics wrote:
The solution currently is to uninstall Illustrator, go to creative cloud, hit the three dots next to Illustrator, click "Other Versions" and install the Middle Eastern version of the software.

Even better, you may install the Middle Eastern version without removing your existing English application (Illustrator or any other app.)

Simply, change your Language settings to say "English يدعم العربية" first as this will give you access to the Middle Eastern (ME) version, click on the three ellipses to choose "Other Versions", then select a little older version from the pop-up window to install that version with Arabic support.

Don't forget to change back your Language settings to English after installing the ME version.

You will end up with two Illustrator copies on your machine that can be opened at the same time, an English copy for your everyday projects, and the ME copy for the Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish and Dari jobs.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded