RTL shows numbers at the end of lines

Question

Trying to display a hebrew string that starts with a number, always displays the number at the end of the string like so: 1. יום שישי בבוקר

but I need the number to be displayed at the right side of the text-

any solution to that?

It happens with UILabel & UITextField & UITextView

and trying to write the number at the left side also produce the same resault.

Playing with combinations of UITextAlignment will doesn't help.

Answer 1

You don't need to change any setting on UILabel, just put the character with unicode 0x200F before your string. This is the reason:

In Unicode many characters have a specific directionality, which lets the system know it has to be written, say LTR, like سلام. The paragraph usually uses the direction of its first character. That's why your string without the number is typed from right to left automatically.

Now some characters, like numbers, have "weak" directionality, so they basically take that of their surrounding. When you type "1. בבוקר", the system first sees 1, so takes the usual LTR direction. Changing the alignment won't help, as it just shifts the whole text to right, or center.

To solve this issue, Unicode has two marker characters (LTR: 0x200E, RTL:200F). These are invisible, but dictate the directionality. So while "1. בבוקר" is...

1. בבוקר

if you type "#x200F" + "1. בבוקר" it will display like this:

‏1. בבוקר

Answer 2

Building on Mo's great answer:

This is the code Obj-C:

NSString *RTFstr = "1. בבוקר"; //This could be any right-to-left string
NSString *directionalString = [@"\u200F" stringByAppendingString:[note text]];
[someUITextView setString:directionalString];

And it actually works...

Answer 3

I had a slightly different problem but Mo's answer gave me the clue.

I wanted to get a LTR text (like "abcd") displayed in RTL direction ("dcba") without having to do myself the string reversing. Turns out enclosing the string between \u202E and \u202C does the trick.

I also recommend reading the following page as it gives a very good explanation of all these unicode magic:

http://www.iamcal.com/understanding-bidirectional-text/