[Framers] LTR in RTL issue...

[Heiko Haida]

Hi Scott, 

when it comes to a mixture of LTR in a RTL context, the software will
also recognize the "natural" direction of every character. 

For now, you can only change this in FrameMaker by adding "bidirectional
marks". There a is an extra palette for this. 
This is not a character format you could apply to a text range, like in
Indesign. I already suggested a more intuitive solution for this in
FrameMaker (in Indesign ME, it is pretty easy to control). 

How do these marks works? --> Well, I am always trying until it fits:
You add a start mark and an end mark, eg. LRO/PDF or LRI/PDI, or LRO
combined with RLO to switch back. Sometimes, the closing mark is not
necessary. Of course, there is an exact definition in Unicode about how
the different marks should work. 

In a perfect translation, the translator should already have added the
marks. (Well, this is just a dream... -- never heard of any translator
who would know this).

pls also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-directional_text 
Or look it up in the Unicode manuals. 

Best regards -- Tino H. Haida, Berlin 

Scott Prentice:

> Hi...
> 
> In FM 2015 .. is there a "text range" property to change the text direction? I'm only seeing this in the paragraph properties, but not in character properties.
> 
> I know that it's supposed to "properly" flip English text, but it appears that there are cases where this doesn't work quite right. (I'm no expert on this formatting, so I can't really say what's "right", but it's apparently not what's wanted.)
> 
> For example, if you have an Arabic paragraph formatted as LTR, and in that paragraph you have some English words that terminate with a special character of some kind or even an inline image. In this case, the English words will properly flip to RTL, but the special character or image (at the end of the English words) will be on the left of those words, when you want it to be on the right. Adding more English words (or a character) "after" the image or special character will make it flip back to the right of the English words .. but if you want this character or image to be at the end (on the right) of the English phrase, you're out of luck it seems.
> 
> If there was a text range property that could be applied to the characters that you always want to be RTL in the middle of an LTR para, this would work just fine. (I think.)
> 
> Anyway .. I don't think that what I'm looking for exists in FM, but I'm asking on the off chance that it might.
> 
> Thanks!
> ...scott