Skip to main content
Lordrhavin
Lordrhavin
Inspiring
November 29, 2023
Question

Indesign bug: RTL mark not working

  • November 29, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1305 views

I have some text in arabic in a manual that gets printed in the wrong direction. If i put a RTL-mark before it, i just get a little directional arrow but the text doesnt change direction. Where do i set RTL/LTR?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Zaid Al Hilali
    Community Expert
    Zaid Al HilaliCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 29, 2023
    quote

    If i put a RTL-mark before it, i just get a little directional arrow but the text doesnt change direction. 


    By @Lordrhavin

     

    I didn't understand the above part of what you wrote. However, I do understand that you need to have RTL / LTR controls

     

    To get these Paragraph direction controls, you need to have the Middle Eastern version of Adobe InDesign.

    In order to install the Middle Eastern copy of Adobe InDesign, you can remove existing copy, or keep existing copy thus having two copies of InDesign eventually, one for Right-to-Left languages, and original copy of InDesign on your machine for English jobs.

     

      Lordrhavin
      LordrhavinAuthor
      Inspiring
      November 29, 2023

      https://www.google.com/search?q=RTL+mark

      I need another version to have a certain basic text feature that any modern browser supports. Are you kidding me?

      Joel Cherney
      Community Expert
      Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 5, 2023

      I installed the ME version. My god. I need to insert the arabic term for "Germany" into brackets behind the english word Germany. It doesnt go well. Whatever I try, it wont come out as "Germany (ألمانيا)". See, how a simple C&P this is with webbrowsers?



      I need to insert the arabic term for "Germany" into brackets behind the english word Germany.

       

      It's probably trying to render the space immediately after the "y" as an LTR space, as it falls between a Latin-script character and an open parenthesis, which is a neutral character. If you mark that space as overtly RTL in Character Direction, it should render as you expect. 

       

      In case you are unaware, I'm not an Adobe employee. Snarky commentary about whether or not an Adobe tool behaves as you expect falls on deaf ears, here. I've been typesetting bidi text for decades, and I personally would far rather have the kind of fine-grained control offered by a real typesetting tool, instead of salting my text with pop directional overrides and directional markers trying to get a third-level nested parenthesis to render in the correct direction, which is usually what I wind up doing when handling complex bidi text in HTML. But I think there's room for all kinds of people to prefer whatever tools they like to use. 

       

      "That's weird. I wish I knew what was going on for you when it didn't work;"

       

      That's the absolute nicest way I can think of to say "You're doing it wrong. Post it." 

       

       

        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices