> Hey all.
>
> I study the Arabic & Persian languages at University, and I'd
> naturally
> like to be able to write these languages in their native script on
> Haiku. I've poked about, but it doesn't seem like Be has any native
> support or an add-on to allow the input of right-to-left text
> (TextView.h makes no mention of writing direction at all, and I can't
> find an input_server addon, except for a Hebrew one that seems to do
> bugger all).
>
> The Arial font in my R5 default install has the characters for both
> Arabic and Farsi, and I can even enter them using the Arabic keymap
> from BeBits, but I can't make them go from right to left and join up
> properly (Arabic is a cursive script, so most of the characters in a
> word are joined).
>
> This is quite important to me and I just wanted to know if it's
> important to anyone else, really... and if there's any plan to
> include
> this natively in Haiku R1, or if someone more knowledgable of Be API
> programming than I would be interested in pointing me to where/how
> this
> could be added.
Full-fledged text rendering which can handle right-to-left, left-to-
right, and vertical fonts is a massive task. At least at this point it
is my intention that R2 have better font services in a lot of respects,
but how all that will work out is still up in the air. I'm still in the
research stage on that one. A lot of what is needed is different layout
engines. BTextView would need to be rewritten, but then again, it
really needs more features anyway.
--DarkWyrm
