[MC-100866] Formatting issue in right-to-left languages

There is formatting error with the text box in the game:
Texts involving *HebrewString1* %s(English string) *HebrewString2* will appear as in reversed order, if the variable is a number, it will display correctly (so that's crucial upon Crowdin translators to choose the correct arrangement of text to fix this issue).
I'm assuming it will show on all the right-to-left languages translations, the most crucial appearance would probably be in the commands output of /help, which will mess the translation to a point that it'll be hard understanding the syntax (the former noted ones would probably still be easy to understand)

Expected behavior:
*hebrewstring1* %s *hebrewstring2* would appear as shown

Actual behavior:
*HebrewString2* %s *HebrewString1* appears instead, as example in English:

press the %space% key to jump

will show as

key to jump %space% press the

Note again, this is showing that way only when Hebrew and English strings are mixed in the text box, the user command line may appear correct, but when prompting with the enter key, the behavior is as described above.

Linked issues

is duplicated by 1

MC-150866 Username wrong when giving other user item Resolved

relates to 2

MC-190854 Command syntax help is affected by right-to-left languages Open

MC-268231 Right-to-left written languages are typed in reverse in input boxes Reopened

Attachments

Comments 15

[Bot] Arisa 2016-04-12T21:12:56Z

Please do not mark unreleased versions as affected.
You don't have access to them yet.

bob 2016-11-06T11:11:17Z

Is this still an issue in the latest snapshot 16w44a? If so please update the affected versions.

This is an automated comment on any open or reopened issue with out-of-date affected versions.

Ron Asor 2016-12-27T21:28:02Z

"1 taken killa2k16 from levels"

marcono1234 2017-05-11T13:36:27Z

I am not sure if this the same problem (maybe you can help me with that @unknown) but it appears text is not rendered right-to-left it there are latin or rather characters not used in right-to-left languages in the text. For example typing or writing ()________________ and then moving the cursor left and right reverses parts of the text likely because the pipebar character used as cursor does not exist in right-to-left languages.

Ron Asor 2017-05-25T14:37:43Z

The text isn't rendered as left to right at all, there are 2 cases basically to RTL parsing:

1)The text is rendered as RTL (aligned and displayed) correctly

2a)The text is not rendered as RTL (text appears mirrored like:" ekil derorrim sraeppa txet") which happens in most non supporting RTL interfaces.
2b)The text is rendered as RTL but displayed as LTR because of interface limitations or presets that were already globally implemented to all of the languages. this also cause issues when both language present in the same line, but not when there's a single language present

The following image describes the differences of how the interpreter displays a sentence in its current (1) and meant to be (2) styles, In addition, bear in mind that the whole interface should appear right to left in RTL languages, including chat boxes etc, however that may cause issues when playing on English servers and also the way of inputting commands (with backslash instead of slash, X killed Y read from right to left which makes a bit of confusion and user-level of understanding)

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5 more comments

Ron Asor 2018-08-18T22:12:43Z

As of 1.13, the issue has gone worse.

The text appears mixed with some special characters, even typing in chat gets messed up by those characters (command interpreters), it's a separate issue but still connected to the formatting.

I would suggest, as a thought about the mentioned in my last comment, to add the ability to switch the whole interface to right to left, that means chat boxes, how text is handled in buttons, sliders etc, Since this issue exist since the day Hebrew translations were put, which is more than few years, I believe this issue will cause many players not to even use the translation at all.

Ron Asor 2018-08-18T22:28:10Z

Also note, because crowdin displays translations differently than minecraft, it also makes minecraft display the translations differently to the player, this is a crucial issue which I believe that may exist in every rtl language but I've yet to confirm it, I advise treating this issue as an urgent manner, because players who will choose the translation will find it unplayable, and revert back to English or any other language that displays correctly to them

Ron Asor 2018-08-18T22:41:20Z

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About the case of this one, as a general priority of Hebrew readers, the text should be on the right while the buttons on the left,

Imagine reading the text from the right side of it, to the left (like in hotbar 1 2 3 etc) and then reading again to the right, it's confusing and ruins the game experience, that is the case with all of the interface of minecraft for this particular RTL language, can't root for other languages, but I'm interested to know if this the case as well.

Ron Asor 2018-08-23T10:32:26Z

Seems like the reoccurring "r" character issue is fixed for now (1.13.1), however the part where the screen should be flipped, and the appearance of /7§ when just typing / still persists.

wobst.michael 2020-07-23T12:00:32Z

Can this still be reproduced in 20w30a or later?

Ron Asor 2020-07-23T17:40:07Z

it seems like some sort of fix was issued but there are still things going on;

enchantment level should be displayed on the left of the enchantment name, same as in english "efficiency V", when you read in hebrew, the enchantment name appears on the right and then on the left the level of it.

also note how the description of "when on feet" enchantments starts to offset a little bit, it's because the text is aligned to the left

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Ron Asor 2020-07-23T17:43:12Z

some of the formattings of english-based text on a server breaks (top server voting message is in english, rest is when language set to hebrew), note the red underline as exampled.

in addition, the name of the player appears as it should, but it's still aligned to the left. a "true RTL experience" would be that the entire message box would appear to the right, with the text aligned to the right extending leftwards. in this situation the text is aligned to the left, extending rightwards, which is somewhere in between.

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Ron Asor 2020-07-23T17:49:04Z

brackets are sometimes reversed when mixed in hebrew and english text appears (should appear as [tpSpawn] / [tpHome] )

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In general it seems like there's a huge leap in progress towards RTL languages, it still needs people to acknowledge how to approach this because it's quite of a wide issue that's hard to track in every bit for a single person

Ron Asor 2020-07-23T17:56:19Z

when typing however, it appears that English language wont format RTL the same way as Hebrew language does (it displays it as it should!)

so in conclusion, it works, but not all the way there to be a fully supported RTL game

I assume the rest of the issues come from the game basically aligning everything to the left, including enchantments&levels, it could just need a very minor fix.

if the messages would begin from the right side of the text box extending to the left that'll be one fix, if the textbox would be on the right side of the screen that'll be even greater fix (including the text beginning from right to left).

alignment should be to the right in addition to right to left formatting, that way you achieve fully supported RTL display and formatting on a certain platform

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[Mod] Jingy 2024-05-05T23:30:17Z

Can you still reproduce this issue in the latest version, 24w18a? If so, please provide clear steps to reproduce it.
From enabling the Hebrew language, I was able to observe that armor displayed all text correctly, unlike how "image-2020-07-23-20-38-08-689.png" showed it.

Here is my result:

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