Right-to-left (Arabic) contribution

[JonOfKent]

I realise this is not an "issue" but I'm afraid I can't find out how to send you a private message.
I've just contributed an Arabic translation on the spreadsheet (this is Modern Standard Arabic). Because of the right-to-left nature of the script I have had some trouble with the formatting and have left some of the English in to make it clearer. The main reason for my posting this is so that you have a way of contacting me if you need it.
Thank you very much for this very nice idea for a watch face.

[samuelmr]

Thanks for the contribution!

The default font used in the watch face (Andika) doesn't seem to include Arabic. Garmin's system font didn't work either in the simulator. I'm looking for alternative approaches.

[JonOfKent]

Ah ok. Fingers crossed. As Arabic is available as a system language, you'd think the system font would work! The vagaries of technology eh. Good luck with finding something.

[samuelmr]

I made some tests, and it seems that I can't get custom font filtering to work with Arabic. (It does work with e.g. Hebrew, which is also right-to-left.) Might be something I'm doing wrong, but I can't figure out the root cause.

Font filtering is required to only pick the glyphs that are needed in the watch face. Otherwise, the whole font would be embedded and the compiled file would be too large to fit into the watch memory.

I submitted a bug to Garmin: https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/i/bug-reports/custom-font-with-filter-fails-with-arabic They are investigating it but I'm not holding my breath...

[JonOfKent]

Oh that is a shame. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that each letter has four forms depending on where it occurs in the word, and the font and/or application are expected to recognise which is the right one and use it.
(Eg. the world "child" is made up of the letters
غ ل ا م
but when you put them together they come out as
غلام
I used the same keys to write those two things.)
Well thank you for trying, and for keeping me up to date, which you didn't have to do. Just have to wait in hope I suppose!