The VideoLAN Forums

still the problem
the RTL was fixed a time ago
but arabic is not just RTL
arabic letters each letter has 3 forms in writing...
1) in the beginning og the word
2) in the middle of the word
3) in the end of the word

and according to the position of the letter it is written in the suitable form

the problem with VLC is that it only handle the one form ( the end of the word form ) only ignoring the other forms

so if the word is (abc) it will be shown as ( a b c )
i.e. separated letters thus to bad to read
in fact impossible to read

any way the windows media player can read it no problem
i'm not loving MS media player
but i need u to help in fixing this problem

i found some previous posts regarding this issue but i tried to explain as simple as possible as i know u do not know arabic...or do u ??

the following pics are for the same subtitle as shown on both VLC and WM player for the same words i hope it explains

AS SHOWN BY VLC



AS SHOWN BY WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER

as i can c....26 users reading this topic...but no reply

is it so hard...or ...u do not care???

as i said before arabic is a complex language...but not so hard to be ignored

i explained as simple as possible...

writing in subtitles are separate letters while they should be connected to each other..as pictures explain...

why VLC handle subtitle writings(letters) as separate letters not as a whole word ???

and how to fix that ???

even using different sets..does not fix the problem..although the windows uses the windows-1256 ...VLC still handle the typing the same separate letters

please help or at least give some hints..to the right way

thanks

Indeed that's a tricky problem. i don't know if it is a problem in VLC or in the lib used for the text (libfreetype2)

Have you tried to force the font to use for subtitles?

As it seems, ligatures do not happen. This a bug known in ttf-freefont. Try with ttf-arabeyes, ttf-kacst and maybe ttf-dejavu.

--
adn

u told me to use other fonts

ok i can try but where to find these fonts and how to force VLC to use these fonts


N.B.
now..i use VLC to play my movies but after i use virtual-dub to perminantly print the subtitles on the movie....THAT WAS THE ONLY AVAILABLE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM

165 users had read this topic
and up till now no one had any ideas
even the ones suggested some ideas...disappeared when asking them in details..
i think arabs..and arab subtitles..are not in the spot of interrests of the supervisors here...

any way thanks developers..thanks supervisors...thanks all

topic is closed

I watched so many DVD movies in VLC and the Arabic subtitles displayed very well. Not to tell you that DVD subtitles are bitmaps floating above the video.

As in your case I think you want to watch a video clip with a seprated subtitle file.. so for this you should have something like VobSub to watch subtitles correctly.. and you should choose a unicode font like (Arial or Tahoma) to display subtitles as they should be..

Please post the screenshots again.. and be specific about the video type and the subtitle type..

as seen above in the screen shots
the letters r separeted while they should be connected
the font was Arial
the video format was Avi
the subtitle was Sub format

and as said before... the VLC display the sub wrong while the windows media played display the same movie..the same subtitle..correctly

that means the problem is with the VLC not with the movie nor with the subtitle

bye

This is correct. The problem is with VLC.
The status of arabic etc in free software is only now getting better. But remember that drawing text correctly is extremely complicated. The solution here is for someone to write a VLC textrender that uses the native windows or macosx text rendering. But this is a rather large and big job.

For linux it can be done with some newer libraries. However we are reluctant to use these libs on windows/mac, because they are GIGANTIC in size.

Basically it's a matter of time and personal interest. More devs, means more fixes.