"Arabic/RTL Text Support with BiDi Rendering"

[commandlinetips]

• the problem :

arabic text not displays disconnected
letters not in the right way in the terminal and if it appear ( RTL ) .

• what have done :

i have a working implementation ensures text renders
correctly of arabic and hebrew (RTL) text support
with proper bidirectional rendering using Fribidi for Unicode Bidirectional
algorithm (UAX # 9 ) analysis and extending HarfBuzz shaping to
handel arabic joining and ligatures , which supports full
arabic / hebrew character shaping with proper
forms ( initial, medial, final, isolated) .

• why this helpful :

usage in the terminal for reading other language files even the " cat " command works great and can show the language in a right way .

the integration i think will work with other languages but i have test only the arabic not the other languages i have some issues with the selecting the text with mouse in arabic ( RTL ) position . working on that I loved Ghostly and the community behind it so hopefully this will be in the " main repo !! "
some day this is my working fork from the with the latest nightly version:

branch : https://github.com/commandlinetips/ghostty/tree/main
(commit: 267cfa8)

• my working fork with arabic support :
  https://github.com/commandlinetips/ghostty

• ai assistance disclosure :
  This feature was implemented with assistance from Claude Code.

• Files Modified :

  • src/text/BiDi.zig - FriBidi integration for bidirectional analysis
  • src/font/shaper/harfbuzz.zig - RTL shaping and glyph reversal
  • src/terminal/Screen.zig - RTL-aware cursor helpers and row detection
  • src/renderer/generic.zig - Visual reordering for rendering
  • src/terminal/Selection.zig - RTL-aware text selection

• what to Include in screenshots / demos :

1. Before (without patch): Arabic text with disconnected letters
2. After (with patch): Same text with properly connected Arabic letters
3. Terminal output: Running the test script showing Arabic renders correctly

• example test command :

echo "Arabic: مرحبا (hello) - letters should connect"
echo "Hebrew: שלום (shalom)"
echo "Mixed: Hello مرحبا World"

- this showing the before and after - this showing the arabic language in terminal using cat command . - this showing writeeing arabic in claude code cli . - this showing the terminal test with different position for the text .

[rhodes-b]

there is already an accepted issue related to RTL (meaning PRs are welcome)
#1442

I think before you open any PRs benchmarks would be appreciated to make sure LTR doesnt have a large performance impact, there are some benchmarks in the repo you can run im not sure how you are supposed to run them though

[pluiedev]

In addition to that, there are already a couple of things that would be commented on if this is turned into an actual PR — namely we should not be handrolling our own function for determining whether a character is Arabic or Hebrew or not, and we should use the right uucode APIs for that. But other than that by all means please open a PR so we can discuss this further

[commandlinetips]

there is already an accepted issue related to RTL (meaning PRs are welcome) #1442

I think before you open any PRs benchmarks would be appreciated to make sure LTR doesnt have a large performance impact, there are some benchmarks in the repo you can run im not sure how you are supposed to run them though

thanks you , i will benchmark and tell you about the result

[commandlinetips]

In addition to that, there are already a couple of things that would be commented on if this is turned into an actual PR — namely we should not be handrolling our own function for determining whether a character is Arabic or Hebrew or not, and we should use the right uucode APIs for that. But other than that by all means please open a PR so we can discuss this further

thanks you, i would love the help of opening the PR but its my first time contributing to project so i don't know how to help but in the right manner i dont know about any api to use it in this manner can you refer to a resource for that

[alomayri]

any updates on this?