[reportlab-users] RTL Patch Committed

[Hosam Aly]

Hello,


I have committed a patch to the "rtl-support" branch, adding partial RTL 
support in "src/reportlab/pdfgen/textobject.py" and 
"src/reportlab/platypus/paragraph", based on pyfribidi.


I have also created a set of test cases in "tests/test_paragraphs.py", 
in a method called testRTL.


I am attaching the results I got by running the test case, and the 
correct expected results, generated by OpenOffice.org's Writer.


Out of 15 test cases, 15 succeeded and 1 failed, which is the sixth one 
(line 6 in the generated PDF). The Arabic words should have appeared at 
the beginning of the line, but instead they appear at the end. This 
issue needs more investigation.


There is still the issue of connecting letters, but that's more related 
to Complex Text Layout (CTL) than it is to supporting BiDirectional 
rendering. I'll try to tackle that issue next. I am thinking of using 
PyICU instead of PyFriBiDi, but I still have to read more about it.


Meanwhile, I read in the PDF standard (version 1.7 from Adobe) that the 
PDF text object supports receiving UTF-16BE text, provided that it 
starts with the Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM, U+FEFF). I wonder what 
would be the results if we wrote text in UTF-16 instead of writing the 
code points in the font? I didn't know how to test this, so I hope 
someone can help me.



Best regards,


Hosam Aly

Software Engineer

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hosamaly


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