Hey UI Team!
When will correct Arabic text rendering be coming to any of Unity’s UI systems? This has been requested for over 10 years. 
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Hi Andy 
We are still working towards Arabic/RTL support.
There are around 4 steps to supporting Arabic / RTL.
Step 1. Break up text into runs. All characters use the same font, style in the same direction, etc.
Step 2: Shaping. RTL plugin
Step 3: Open type, ligatures, font features
Step 4: Layout phase
We are just about to land support for Step 3, reading OpenType features from fonts such as ligatures and diacritical marks(mark to mark, mark to base etc). This is required for many languages including Arabic.
We just finished this for TMP (the PR is ready!), next we will implement it for TextCore (UI Toolkit).
Then we need to add support for the other 3 areas. Steps 1 and 2 will be the next area we focus on after we land the OpenType features. So still a way to go which makes it difficult to give any reliable predictions. A rough prediction would be during 2023.
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Hey karl, Thanks for the info! 
Unfortunately I can’t pester you about this on Slack anymore so used this event as an opportunity to pester you officially on here. 
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so 10 years for step one and two??!! mmmmmmmmm
Ok that means we will need 10 more years for step 3 and 4
Hi Karl,
Any update on this and if it’s still roughly expected this year?
Thanks!
We have now landed Step 3, the OpenType features.
Unfortunately, I am unable to provide specific timelines for the remaining features at the moment. Earlier this year, the text team underwent changes that have altered the plans significantly. As a result, they are currently in the process of assembling new plans and strategies. Once these plans are finalized, I will be able to provide you with more accurate information regarding the timelines for the remaining features.
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Thanks for the info @karl_jones !
Just to clarify, will this step also include fixes for GSUB/GPOS issues experienced with language such as Hindi & Gujarati?
I’m not aware of these issues. Do they still happen on the latest version of TMP 3.2.0-pre.4?
If they do then please file a bug report
In reference to this post here:
https://discussions.unity.com/t/873923/6
Which mentions:
In terms of these font features, support for Diacritical Marks and Ligatures was recently added to the latest preview release of TMP which is version 3.2.0-pre.2. Currently the tables for Ligatures and Diacritical Marks need to be manually populated but these will be automatically populated in a future release of the Unity Editor.
Would this automatic population be a part of the OpenType feature you mentioned earlier? Or this a different problem all together?
Thanks!
Yes, the auto populate is now available in 3.2.0-pre.4 https://discussions.unity.com/t/903690
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The post quoted above by aarons suggests this could solve a lot of Arabic issues when combined with RTLTMPro. But I found that RTLTMPro might work at cross purposes with the newly imported tables.
Because I believe RTLTMPro replaces characters in the general Arabic unicode block with similar ones in the Arabic Presentation Forms-B block in order to connect characters together. The font I’m working with seems to use the general block for some kerning pairs. So kerning doesn’t work without manually adjusting the tables (which is a painful process and subject to data loss as discussed here ).
(I thought of modifying the Ligature table manually to connect characters without RTLTMPro. It might not be a valid approach, and I don’t know how it’ll work with kerning.)
Hi Karl,
Any update on this please ?
Thanks!
There’s nothing I can offer at the moment other than it is still being worked on.
Any updates on rendering Arabic in TMPro, with Taksheel?
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Any updates?
It’s coming in Unity 6
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Great news!
Will support be coming to UGUI / TMP as well?
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Thanks
we need this in TMP please
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+1 to support for ugui/TMP
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