[RTL] Sublime Text and Arabic, Persian, Hebrew languages

[Xees]

It looks normal in the title bar and the tab bar.

I really hope this bug is fixed soon.

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Edit by @FichteFoll (2017-05-27):

DO NOT POST +1 UNDER THIS ISSUE! USE THE REACTION FEATURE! (And press "Subscribe" if you'd like to be notified of hopefully useful comments.)

[FichteFoll]

So, what you're requesting is basically RTL support?

[iMagdy]

Yes, but inside the RTL strings, because the rest of the file will be normally an LTR programming language, you can check Facebook for inspiration in the chat box, it writes LTR normally until you write any RTL string between the LTR text, IDK how they detect this change in language, but it works perfectly!

[elkebirmed]

Add an RTL layout to the view options, Please!

[titoBouzout]

Related:

• http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=710
• https://sublimetext.userecho.com/topic/37207-right-to-left-languages-support/
• https://github.com/hossein361224/Sublime-Text-2-BIDI

[mohamedsalehamin]

still waiting this to be fixed .. any news soon ?

[shoully]

Still waiting this to be fixed .. just curios what's is the problem for implementing the "Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm" ?

I will use Atom for RTL files until it fixed.

[arLevi]

+1

[sapiraz]

+1 I'm a part of a 15 people development team interested in the editor but due to lack of RTL support we're using Atom.

[Raz-Girit]

+1

[inegmdev]

+1

[danbonnie]

+1

Requires a fix - impossible to work like that.

[dariozain]

Please fix

[titoBouzout]

Most recent reply from sales@ST about this is :

Unfortunately at this time Sublime Text does not support RTL languages.

in https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/rtl-support/18328/9?u=tito

[FichteFoll]

You can actually "vote" (or react, rather) on github issues now. Although they are not sortable or ranked by any means, these votes are still more likely to be looked at that userecho, which has been dead for the past maybe 5 years. Just speculating though.

[MattDMo]

@fryaniv and @nikolassharp please use Github's "reaction" capability to respond to individual posts. Extraneous comments that do not add to the conversation may be deleted, as many people get notified each and every time someone posts.

[miladghiravani]

this bug is not solved? I install Sublime 3114 but not usable :(

[FichteFoll]

FYI, this issue was locked due to numerous "+1" posts, which I deleted. As everyone can see in this project's readme, these posts are unwanted and you should use the reaction feature.

[FichteFoll]

I was made aware that it is not possible to react to comments (or the OP) when an issue is locked, which is quite disappointing and unexpected for me.

I'll re-open this issue to allow people to react to it, i.e. upvote, but when people start with "+1" posts again, I might have to re-lock it.

[FichteFoll]

I guess reading really is hard.

[aviadhahami]

Well, guess they really need the Arabic support :rofl:

[mfadel85]

of course we need it.

[aladaghlou]

Please solve this problem.

[notinactive]

Hi, Please Fix this problem

Thanks alot

[devmrh]

please fix it

[TehShrike]

Don't forget: posting messages in this thread doesn't accomplish anything. Give a thumbs-up reaction to the original post to up-vote the issue.

[ghost]

please append rtl in new version

[aladaghlou]

please fix it :(

[avramit]

please fix it

[kyahyaoui]

plz fix it

[Tech4c]

plz we need to fix it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[TehShrike]

Is there some amount of money that would justify adding this feature, Bountysource-style? If we could get 50 people to put up 100$ each, would that justify the time and effort in the short term?

In the long term, I expect this is an economically viable choice anyway. VS:Code has great RTL support, and will probably end up eating a lot of market for that reason alone without competition.

[eiliyaabedini]

Please fix it

[mfadel85]

as TehShrike said: Don't** forget: posting messages in this thread doesn't accomplish anything. Give a thumbs-up reaction to the original post to up-vote the issue.

[the94air]

@titoBouzout @FichteFoll It has been more than 5 years and this issue still not been solved (not a single progress as we know). I respect your massive effort of making millions developers life more productive, easier and faster .....
But sublime Text 3 has been released we were very disappointed that it still has no support for RTL languages .Here a list of some countries that still struggling from the issue.

Country	Population
Egypt	82,060,000
Algeria	39,210,000
Sudan	37,960,000
Iraq	33,042,000
Morocco	33,010,000
Saudi Arabia	28,290,000
Yemen	24,410,000
Syria	22,850,000
Tunisia	10,890,000
United Arab Emirates	9,346,000
Jordan	6,459,000
Libya	6,202,000
Lebanon	4,467,000
Palestine	4,170,000
Mauritania	3,890,000
Oman	3,632,000
Kuwait	3,369,000
Qatar	2,169,000
Bahrain	1,332,000

420 million people around the world speak Arabic, 110 million speak Persian & 9 million speak Hebrew. Not enough!!! Then .. when it will be? Please can you provide more than enough explanation about what is your next move (about this issue)? and how we can help? At lease make a GitHub milestone.

Please consider reading more about Arabic Language. Thanks very much.

[aladaghlou]

@the94air Thanks for the usefulness of this post. Also, add these statistics to countries that speak Persian. Over 110 million people speak Persian in the world

[yoniamir]

@the94air Let's not forget to mention Hebrew with about 10-12 Hebrew speaking people around the world. Also, Israel is a software powerhouse where some of the greatest software is being built daily. Sublime Text is a great tool which is being used in many of its tech companies.

[ochebotar]

Fix this issue, please. It is super important!

[MRezaSafari]

seriously!! should be even waiting for it ? or its a no no ?

[keith-hall]

In case anyone is interested in how complicated proper Complex Text Layout is, there are some blog posts about it here:

• http://www.catch22.net/tuts/uniscribe-mysteries
• http://www.catch22.net/tuts/drawing-styled-text-uniscribe

One of the ST devs has commented on RTL support on the forums, so its possible that SublimeHQ will work on it soon, now that ST 3.0 is released, but that is just my speculation.

[sapiraz]

Even though I need RTL support every now and then, I agree with the dev on the forum claiming that this may not be the top thing on the list for Sublime to fix right now.

Sublime is a small project, and as one - the issues being addressed by the devs are usually the ones with the highest priority, others will be delayed (a lot in this case).

I think that Sublime really had a major role in the field for the last few years, Many text editors followed suit but some of them are backed by bigger organizations / open source communities.

Most of these editors are being updated at a very high rate, they're completely free, and the vast majority of them support RTL (Atom, VSCode, Brackets etc')

My bottom line is, Sublime is closed-source, and has (according to the forum) 2 developers. I don't know how they're planning to compete with the editors I mentioned above. It did what it did for the community, showing the advantages of lightweight editors, But I see no advantage in using it, not to mention paying 80$ for a license.

[abdelrahmana23]

hi , how support Arabic language in Sublime Text

[mibrahimdev]

is there any updates?

[FichteFoll]

You can rest assured that this issue will be updated (and closed) once there are any updates. This issue tracker is actively maintained after all.

[themedleb]

The best alternatives to SublimeText that supports RTL natively are:

• Visual Studio Code.
• Brackets.
• Atom.

I tested all in Arabic, and here is my summary: Atom supports RTL just visually, Visual Studio Code and Brackets supports it visually and practically, I prefer Visual Studio Code.

And they are all open source.

I love open source.

[aladaghlou]

@FichteFoll We are still waiting for this update. Many thanks

[MRezaSafari]

@themedleb yea I removed sublime for good. already using VSCode for month and its so good. better than atom and brackets and definitely better than sublime. they just want our money but no support about the most wanted features. this issues is for 2013. so if they wanted to add the RTL support they would do it by now.

move on people.

[aladaghlou]

@Cloze VSCode is a IDE and not a editor. VSCode using more than 400MB memory for a small project instead Sublime Text a lot less memory, it does. Sublime Text very quickly than VSCode. I prefer sublime text.

[the94air]

I agree with @Cloze. And I already changed to Visual Studio Code. it looks way cooler than sublime text and SUPPORTS RTL even know it is slower than sublime text. Let's move on guys .Just try VSC for one week and you will fall in love with it. :smile:

[themedleb]

@Cloze Yes, they should add RTL support to it very long time ago for three main reasons: -1 it's very popular. -2 it's closed source, so no one can contribute to add RTL support to it. -3 (because of the first reason) they are making a lot of money out of it, with this they can hire bunch of developers or at least one developer to add it for them.

But they chose not to do anything about it, what are we to judge them? They are free to do whatever they want with the product they own, and we are free to move on and use whatever better for us, thanks to the open source community.

@aladaghlou Yeah, but I don't think that VSCode is an IDE, there is a difference between Microsoft Visual Studio Code And Microsoft Visual Studio, as Hugo Di Francesco said: "Visual Studio Code combines the ease of use of a classic lightweight text editor with more powerful IDE-type features with very minimal configuration", so it's not an IDE, it just looks like it, because it has some of the power Microsoft Visual Studio has, also being an IDE doesn't make it less than SublimeText, that DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU NEED IT FOR (for example in the case of Hugo Di Francesco, he doesn't need it).

And for the memory, I just took a look at it with 4 documents opened, 28 extension installed, and it's running with less than 300MB, and considering I'm working on the project of my dream that needs source code editor with RTL support, I would go blind for VSCode since it supports it completely and natively even if it runs with 500MB, and I might use it for other RTL projects in the future.

Just to note that RTL is very important to support as @the94air stated that there are more than half billion people needs it.

Also imagine all the big platforms makers like Microsoft with Windows and Google with Android and Apple with iOS/MacOS and Automattic with Wordpress ... and all the developers-investors like the iOS/Android apps/games-creators makers and Wordpress themes/plugins makers ... they all support RTL, but when you want to create/edit your app/game/website/... you will find that your source code editor doesn't support RTL, it's kind of useless even to think about.

I'm sorry, but SublimeText team are giving me more reasons not to use their product, nor to recommend it for RTL support developers.

@the94air I used SublimeText too for some time, but found it useless and changed to VSCode after testing many other editors, and guess what!! I fell in love with it quickly :D maybe because I already have a good experience with Microsoft Visual Studio.

[MRezaSafari]

@aladaghlou Visual Studio Code is a streamlined code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running and version control.

and I believe using more memory for supporting more things like RTL is quite better than using less memory and less features.