Bidirectional Text

Bidirectional Text — Types and functions to help with handling bidirectional text

Functions

Types and Values

Object Hierarchy

    GEnum
    ├── PangoBidiType
    ╰── PangoDirection

Description

Pango supports bidirectional text (like Arabic and Hebrew) automatically. Some applications however, need some help to correctly handle bidirectional text.

The PangoDirection type can be used with pango_context_set_base_dir() to instruct Pango about direction of text, though in most cases Pango detects that correctly and automatically. The rest of the facilities in this section are used internally by Pango already, and are provided to help applications that need more direct control over bidirectional setting of text.

Functions

pango_unichar_direction ()

PangoDirection
pango_unichar_direction (gunichar ch);

Determines the inherent direction of a character; either PANGO_DIRECTION_LTR, PANGO_DIRECTION_RTL, or PANGO_DIRECTION_NEUTRAL.

This function is useful to categorize characters into left-to-right letters, right-to-left letters, and everything else. If full Unicode bidirectional type of a character is needed, pango_bidi_type_for_unichar() can be used instead.

Parameters

ch

a Unicode character

 

Returns

the direction of the character.


pango_find_base_dir ()

PangoDirection
pango_find_base_dir (const gchar *text,
                     gint length);

Searches a string the first character that has a strong direction, according to the Unicode bidirectional algorithm.

Parameters

text

the text to process

 

length

length of text in bytes (may be -1 if text is nul-terminated)

 

Returns

The direction corresponding to the first strong character. If no such character is found, then PANGO_DIRECTION_NEUTRAL is returned.

Since 1.4


pango_get_mirror_char ()

gboolean
pango_get_mirror_char (gunichar ch,
                       gunichar *mirrored_ch);

pango_get_mirror_char is deprecated and should not be used in newly-written code.

If ch has the Unicode mirrored property and there is another Unicode character that typically has a glyph that is the mirror image of ch 's glyph, puts that character in the address pointed to by mirrored_ch .

Use g_unichar_get_mirror_char() instead; the docs for that function provide full details.

Parameters

ch

a Unicode character

 

mirrored_ch

location to store the mirrored character

 

Returns

TRUE if ch has a mirrored character and mirrored_ch is filled in, FALSE otherwise


pango_bidi_type_for_unichar ()

PangoBidiType
pango_bidi_type_for_unichar (gunichar ch);

Determines the normative bidirectional character type of a character, as specified in the Unicode Character Database.

A simplified version of this function is available as pango_unichar_direction().

Parameters

ch

a Unicode character

 

Returns

the bidirectional character type, as used in the Unicode bidirectional algorithm.

Since 1.22

Types and Values

enum PangoDirection

The PangoDirection type represents a direction in the Unicode bidirectional algorithm; not every value in this enumeration makes sense for every usage of PangoDirection; for example, the return value of pango_unichar_direction() and pango_find_base_dir() cannot be PANGO_DIRECTION_WEAK_LTR or PANGO_DIRECTION_WEAK_RTL, since every character is either neutral or has a strong direction; on the other hand PANGO_DIRECTION_NEUTRAL doesn't make sense to pass to pango_itemize_with_base_dir().

The PANGO_DIRECTION_TTB_LTR, PANGO_DIRECTION_TTB_RTL values come from an earlier interpretation of this enumeration as the writing direction of a block of text and are no longer used; See PangoGravity for how vertical text is handled in Pango.

Members

PANGO_DIRECTION_LTR

A strong left-to-right direction

 

PANGO_DIRECTION_RTL

A strong right-to-left direction

 

PANGO_DIRECTION_TTB_LTR

Deprecated value; treated the same as PANGO_DIRECTION_RTL.

 

PANGO_DIRECTION_TTB_RTL

Deprecated value; treated the same as PANGO_DIRECTION_LTR

 

PANGO_DIRECTION_WEAK_LTR

A weak left-to-right direction

 

PANGO_DIRECTION_WEAK_RTL

A weak right-to-left direction

 

PANGO_DIRECTION_NEUTRAL

No direction specified

 

enum PangoBidiType

The PangoBidiType type represents the bidirectional character type of a Unicode character as specified by the

Unicode bidirectional algorithm.

Members

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_L

Left-to-Right

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_LRE

Left-to-Right Embedding

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_LRO

Left-to-Right Override

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_R

Right-to-Left

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_AL

Right-to-Left Arabic

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_RLE

Right-to-Left Embedding

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_RLO

Right-to-Left Override

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_PDF

Pop Directional Format

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_EN

European Number

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_ES

European Number Separator

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_ET

European Number Terminator

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_AN

Arabic Number

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_CS

Common Number Separator

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_NSM

Nonspacing Mark

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_BN

Boundary Neutral

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_B

Paragraph Separator

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_S

Segment Separator

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_WS

Whitespace

 

PANGO_BIDI_TYPE_ON

Other Neutrals

 

Since 1.22

See Also

pango_context_get_base_dir(), pango_context_set_base_dir(), pango_itemize_with_base_dir()