[reportlab-users] Hebrew Support Patch

[Moshe Wagner]

Hello,

While trying to use reportlab with Hebrew text, I noticed Hebrew isn't
really supported (The text appears mirrored).

In this list's archive I saw a post saying I should use
"pyfribidi.log2vis" on my text.

That worked for single lines, but it made paragraphs start from the
bottom up (as the text really goes from the top left down, flipping it
makes it seem like it starts at bottom right going up).


So I've added, (to reportlab_2_3),  a few lines to 'paragraph.py',
making it visualise every line after the text has been split up,
rather than doing that before.
It seemed to work well, besides a minor issue that when
full_justified,  the last line of text is on the left, which is what
should happen for LTR text, but not for RTL.

The code is ignored if pyfribidi isn't installed, but anyway, it
shouldn't affect any LTR text.

I'm not a great programmer, and neither do I know python or reportlab
very well, so I can't promise the code is so great, or that it covers
all cases.

Anyway, here's what I added:

-> In "paragraph.h", in the "wrap" function, right after calling
"self.breakLine":
( the code I ad was version 2_3):

######################
# Hebrew text patch, Moshe Wagner, June 2009
# <moshe.wagner at gmail.com>


#This code fixes paragraphs with RTL text

# It does it by joining all the words of each line, flips them with pyfribidi
#(if needed), then splits them again, and re enters them to the paragraph's text

#If fribidi cant be imported, it does nothing

try:
	import pyfribidi
	
	for i in range(len(blPara.lines)):
		s = ""
		for j in range(len(blPara.lines[i][1])):
			#print self.blPara.lines[i][1][j]
			s = s + self.blPara.lines[i][1][j] + " "
			
		while len(blPara.lines[i][1]) > 0:
			self.blPara.lines[i][1].pop(0)
		
		s = pyfribidi.log2vis (s, base_direction = pyfribidi.ON)
		splits = s.split()
		
		#print splits
		
		for j in range(len(splits)):
			self.blPara.lines[i][1].append(splits[j])
		#print self.blPara.lines[i][1][1:]
except ImportError:
	print "Fribidi module not found; You will not have rtl support for
this paragraph"
######################


-> And in "canvas.py", in the "drawString" function, right at it's begining:
######################
# Hebrew text patch, Moshe Wagner, June 2009
# <moshe.wagner at gmail.com>

# Flips the given text with pyfribidi, if it's needed (i.e. Hebrew or Arabic)
# If it could not be imported, it does nothing
try:
	import pyfribidi
	
	text = pyfribidi.log2vis(text, base_direction = pyfribidi.ON)
	
except ImportError:
	print "Fribidi module not found; You will not have rtl support for this line"
#####################


I'd be very glad if you could merge this into the code, no need to
keep any reference to me.

Thanks,
Moshe