[Framers] LTR in RTL issue...

[Scott Prentice]

Thank you Tino!

This does seem to work (mostly)! Yes .. you'd think that the translator 
should be doing this, as it would be part of a proper translation. I'm 
working with XML markup and I'm thinking that you might be able to add 
these "marks" as prefix and suffix rules to certain elements, controlled 
by the @dir attribute. If @dir='ltr' set the prefix to LTR override and 
the suffix to POP.

... testing ...

Hmm .. bummer. It doesn't seem to work. It looks like the EDD isn't 
applying the marks for prefix and suffix. If I manually add the marks 
before and after the .. <ph dir='ltr'>Fn + %</ph> .. it works right (and 
displays like "Fn + %"). But with the EDD-applied marks, it stays like 
this .. "% + Fn". Seems like a FM bug?

I suppose I could create a plugin to add these marks to elements with 
the @dir attribute, but then I'd need to be sure to strip them off on 
file save, else they'd keep getting added .. hmm.

Anyway .. thanks for your help!

Cheers!
...ttocs



On 9/24/16 5:06 AM, Heiko Haida wrote:
>
> 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
>>
>>