Arabic in Flash using xml & css
10Jul2007 Filed under: Arabic in Flash, Articles, Downloads, Tutorials Author: Creative UAE
Few days back i was at an interview and the guy asked me they were having some trouble in importing arabic text in flash from xml or text file, the problem they were facing was to make the arabic text right to left.
I tried it at home and i figured it out that its very easy to import text from xml into flash but to control it from right to left i had to use css so that we can change the font type to Arial and its direction to right, by the way if you are using textbox then its pretty much easy, no need of css but if you are using complex text components like textarea and tree then i think this technique will save you lot time.
- Tags: Adobe, Arabic in Flash, Flash
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Chris
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Hi
Thanks for posting this tutorial i am trying to achieve the same on a project i`m doing for a customer in dubai. I`ve never tried to get arabic into flash and am having some problems!
In the image above, your arabic text looks perfect, the words are all joined up. When i run the live demo, it does not output the same, it looks like seperate characters. I was wondering whether it depends on local machine settings?
thanks for any information on this.
creativeuae
July 24th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Hi Chris
yes i think you have to install east asian languages support.
I have installed the support for east asian languages from Regional & Language Options in control panel.
But if you are developing a project for a client in middle east, you dont have to worry about the local, almost everybody have arabic support installed in their OS.
regards
aarif
Chris
July 24th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Hi Aarif
That worked!
Thanks for your help, much appreciated
Chris
shagarah
July 24th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Actualy, importing Arabic text is not a problem, but dealing with bidirectional text of Arabic and English within the same line is a big one.
Adobe Flash 10 would insha’ Allah support bidirectional text, more info here:
I also made a third version of “Flaraby” a component which tries to solve this problem but just for Arabic, you can check a beta test here.
creativeuae
July 25th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Dear shagarah
Thanks a lot for this very useful comment, I am making a new post and will put all the info there which you provided.
once again thank you for sharing the knowledge.
keep blogging
aarif
fahad
March 4th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I am working on a similar project and having same unjoined Arabic letter problem, My XML document in encoded in UTF-8, even the html file on which the swf is placed is also encoded into UTF-8, I am calling the Arabic text from XML into a dynamic text box.
Does anyone have any solution for this?
Fahad.
admin
March 15th, 2008 at 6:39 am
hi fahad
you have to use css for controlling the arabic format.
you can download the free sample and see how its working. one more thing is you have to have Arabic support install.
hope this will help.
fahad
March 30th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Hi all,
It worked, for fixing the broken letters; I copied the Arabic text from word to Flaraby, converted it and then paste it back to XML, Now all coming in nicely.
Thanks for supporting
Fahad.
jimmy
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:33 am
Hi,
there is an application specialized to allow arabic in Flash. it is called Kalimat (for MAC) and Al Rassam (for windows). Text is correct when editing and when compiling.
the website is http://www.layoutltd.com
cheers
Jimmy
Abadi
May 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Asslam Alykom
I’ve tried loading arabic text from XML file and I have never had any problems.
BUT when I tried to load lots of text, like a paragraph for instance, I had to use wordwrap and that doesn’t go weel with arabic
I see you have the same prob in your example. the HamzaH of كهرباء is wraped to a new line
Do you have any ideas how to fix that
Parag
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:04 am
The fullstop the colon doesn’t come at the end of sentence (left) but on the start of teh sentence(right). rest all works fine.
Christian Oettinger
November 10th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Hi all,
This solution does not work on my mac – although it is capable of writing and showing arabic. Flaraby (the other solution sooner than AS3) is not available any more. So am I right: There is no stable dynamic way of reading arabic text in FLash?
Thanks for any answer
Christian Oettinger
November 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Sorry, I forgot: The problem on my Mac is: The letters are not connected in this example. On standard arabic Sites they are!
koko Wawa
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:14 pm
excuse me can you explain in arabic
raven
April 15th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I am having the same issues… I have no problem with getting arabic to display correctly within my flash environment, as long as I have advanced languages installed, and set the text box to right>left, and make sure it is written correctly within my xml I am loading. Except… sometimes flash doesn’t know how to properly wrap the text if the sentances are too long and I get an unrequested “!” at the end of a line and then it continues with the sentance on the next, or it will break apart a word so it is partly on both lines… which is usually done with a hyphen in english but in arabic it is just wrong.
Anyone have a fix yet?
Kazi Mohammad Ekram
April 18th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Thanks for your great help.
hari
April 20th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Thanks for posting this tutorial.But one thing I was not understood is the arabic data in the data.xml file is in which format.Can any body help me to know the format.