# Right-to-left text
**URL:** https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527
**Category:** Coding Questions
**Created:** [September 13, 2018, 10:20pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527 "2018-09-13T22:20:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Miguel](https://discourse.processing.org/u/Miguel)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2018, 10:20pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/1 "2018-09-13T22:20:33Z")
Hey folks, long time no see. I’ve been away from processing for a while but now I’ve opened it again for a small project: I am trying to render some Persian text within processing. The text looks fine when the result is rendered using P2d and exported as a PNG. However when the renderer is switched to PDF the text looks all broken like the characters are being flipped. I believe this has to do with how PDF mode handles RTL text. Unfortunately a simple scale to flip the whole text does not fix the problem.
Is there a way to handle this issue?
---
### Author:  [@kfrajer](https://discourse.processing.org/u/kfrajer)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 3:01am UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/2 "2018-09-14T03:01:07Z")
Can you provide a small code sample reproducing the problem?
Kf
---
### Author:  [@WakeMeAtThree](https://discourse.processing.org/u/WakeMeAtThree)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/3 "2018-09-14T06:08:33Z")
> [@Miguel](#):
>
> . The text looks fine when the result is rendered using P2d and exported as a PNG. However when the renderer is switched to PDF the text looks all broken like the characters are being flipped. I believe this has to do with how PDF mode handles RTL text. Unfortunately a simple scale to flip the whole text does not fix the problem.
>
> Is there a way to handle this issue?
Hi @Miguel!
I run into this issue a lot in Arabic, and not just in processing, but also in illustrator, photoshop, etc. One quick fix I tend to use is to flip input text (you can do that on your own or use [this online tool to flip it](http://www.arabic-keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/))
For example, اهلا وسهلا in Arabic (It means “Welcome”) appears correctly to you right now, but then it appears like this when rendered to pdf:
So then, I change اهلا وسهلا to its flipped version using the previous tool ﻼﻬﺳﻭ ﻼﻫﺍ, and then it appears correctly.
If anyone needs a simple example to test this out, here it is:
```java
import processing.pdf.*;
void setup() {
size(400, 400, PDF, "test.pdf");
textAlign(CENTER, CENTER);
fill(0);
textSize(64);
}
void draw() {
background(255);
text("ﻼﻬﺳﻭ ﻼﻫﺍ", width/2, height/2);
exit();
}
```
---
### Author:  [@Miguel](https://discourse.processing.org/u/Miguel)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 10:14am UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/4 "2018-09-14T10:14:20Z")
WakeMeAtThree:
I tried a similar approach to what this tool is doing, mainly reversing the string with StringBuilder:
```auto
import processing.pdf.*;
void setup() {
size(400, 400, PDF, "test.pdf");
textAlign(CENTER, CENTER);
fill(0);
textSize(64);
}
void draw() {
background(255);
String welcome = "اهلا وسهلا";
String emoclew = new StringBuilder(welcome).reverse().toString();
text(emoclew, width/2, height/2);
exit();
}
```
I am not a Persian speaker, but I believe by looking at the results that even though the string was reversed, the end results were definitely not accurate, still did not look legible. Maybe I missed something.
I have also tried to use unicode characters to set the text direction ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal\_Character\_Set\_characters#Bidirectional\_General\_Formatting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Character_Set_characters#Bidirectional_General_Formatting)) but it looks like they are being ignored by Processing.
---
### Author:  [@WakeMeAtThree](https://discourse.processing.org/u/WakeMeAtThree)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 11:41am UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/5 "2018-09-14T11:41:55Z")
Hi @Miguel,
It is not exactly a reversed string (I wish if it was as easy as that). I would encourage you to use the online tool I suggested previously to flip your texts instead rather than implement it yourself. This should help make your text legible, and if it still isn’t, post your code + sample text here so we can see what’s the issue.
---
### Author:  [@Miguel](https://discourse.processing.org/u/Miguel)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 12:06pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/6 "2018-09-14T12:06:59Z")
The problem is I am pulling text from a database, so this tool wont help much ;(
---
### Author:  [@TheWizardBear](https://discourse.processing.org/u/TheWizardBear)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 2:28pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/7 "2018-09-14T14:28:32Z")
Does this work?
```auto
String oldString = "hello world";
String newString = "";
void setup(){
size(400, 400);
background(255);
fill(0);
for(int chr = oldString.length()-1; chr >= 0; chr--){
newString += oldString.charAt(chr);
}
text("original string: " + oldString, 50, 50);
text("new string: " + newString, 50, 100);
}
```
---
### Author:  [@Miguel](https://discourse.processing.org/u/Miguel)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 2:52pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/8 "2018-09-14T14:52:43Z")
Unfortunately not. Tried that, it is just another form of doing StringBuilder().rever() or convert a string to a char array and looping it. I am not so knowledgeable about Arabic, but I believe it has to do with the fact that some characters take more memory allocation than other.
---
### Author:  [@WakeMeAtThree](https://discourse.processing.org/u/WakeMeAtThree)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 3:10pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/9 "2018-09-14T15:10:54Z")
Here’s a [blog post](http://mpcabd.xyz/python-arabic-text-reshaper/) that addresses the Arabic text shape issue. You will also find mentioned a Python port of [Better Arabic Reshaper](https://github.com/agawish/Better-Arabic-Reshaper) which is written in Java. So there are two approaches you can take:
- Either incorporate Better Arabic Reshaper (or an similar set of tools) into your processing sketch so that you transform your data as you render it.
- Or transform the dataset first (maybe in python with `arabic_reshaper` or a similar library) and then do your pdf generation as normal in processing.
Also, one more issue you might have is that the set of letters in your text-script may have 3 or 4 more distinct letters than Arabic, so if you don’t find any dedicated library to it, you may have to include it yourself in whatever library you end up using.
@TheWizardBear I wish that would work, but it’s not just reversed string. Take a look at [this code to get an idea](https://github.com/agawish/Better-Arabic-Reshaper/blob/master/src/org/amr/arabic/ArabicReshaper.java) from the Arabic reshaper set of tools I linked to earlier.
---
### Author:  [@Miguel](https://discourse.processing.org/u/Miguel)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2018, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/right-to-left-text/3527/10 "2018-09-14T15:37:15Z")
> [@WakeMeAtThree](#):
>
> Better Arabic Reshaper
Thank you very much, WakeMeAtThree. This is the kind of information I needed to understand the issue and implement my own solution. I really appreciate you taking the time to dig this. As a side note, maybe something like that could be incorporated in Processing core, like a direction parameter on the text() or a TextDirection(), like we have TextMode().