Re: [iText-questions] Problems in Arabic Diactrics (tashkeel)

[Ayman Zarroug]

Title: RE: [iText-questions] Problems in Arabic Diactrics (tashkeel)

The method "ColumnText.setArabicOptions(ColumnText.AR_COMPOSEDTASHKEEL)" is being called, but it doesn't resolve the problem.   Just to clarify the problem, words in arabic may have diacritics (tashkeel), which are symbols that appear either above or below a letter.  The diacrics should not affect the way in which 2 letters are joined.  Currently, iText treats diactrics as a normal character that affects the way letters are joined.   The method "ArabicLigaturizer.ligature(nextletter, curchar)" checks the current character with the next character in order to determine the join type.  The method correctly determines when a word with diacritics is being processed and returns a value of 1 to distinguish this case. In the method "ArabicLigaturizer.shape(char text[], StringBuffer string, int level)" there is a sequence of if-then-else blocks that shape the characters based on the join type (determined by ligature method).  However, the case for join type 1 (diactric join) is not implemented.   I think the correct behaviour for the diactric join would be: 1. Determine the join type based on the current character and the character following the diacritic. 2. Draw the diactric either above or below the character preceding the diactric (depending on which diactric).   Ayman ----- Original Message ----- From: Paulo Soares To: Ayman Zarroug ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 8:50 PM Subject: RE: [iText-questions] Problems in Arabic Diactrics (tashkeel) You may try: ColumnText.setArabicOptions(ColumnText.AR_COMPOSEDTASHKEEL); If that's not satisfactory as an arabic speaker you'll be able to give pointers to correct it. I can produce code but I don't know a word of arabic. Best Regards, Paulo Soares -----Original Message----- From:   [EMAIL PROTECTED] [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ayman Zarroug Sent:   Tuesday, December 16, 2003 14:54 To:     [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:        [iText-questions] Problems in Arabic Diactrics (tashkeel) So glad that arabic is now supported in iText, as this finally allows us to generate PDF reports using iReport and JasperReports (though it was necessary to make some modifications in both iReport and JasperReports to get this running).   The good news is that it generally works.  The bad news is that arabic text with diacritics are not properly displayed in PDFs.  This can be seen by running the sample "hebrew-arabic" code provided by Paulo Soares at arabic_hebrew.java in itextpdf.sf.net.   Tried the new release itext-paulo-127, but that doesn't seem to fix the problem.   Looking through iText code leads me to believe that functionality to handle this case is not implemented.   Are there any plans to solve this problem in the near future???   ayman