Home/ Questions/Q 8087651
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-05T18:50:48+00:00

I’m working on a relatively simple Android app. I want it to have an

  • 0

I’m working on a relatively simple Android app. I want it to have an English version as well as a Hebrew version. (RTL Right to Left Alignment)

I have manually change the alignment to right in layout xml file. When a sentence contains digits (in the middle of it), the digits appear in a mirror view:
29 appears as 92, 21:45 appears as 54:12 and 2,000 appears as 000,2.

Also, when a sentence starts with digits or English characters, they get thrown to the end of the sentence messing it all up.

I think for android version 4.0.3 it supports Hebrew. I have check that in emulator.

So for older versions is there correct way to implement Hebrew?
Please help.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think that Android’s bidi analysis algorithm has some flaws. Unicode has two invisible, strongly directional characters that might help with these problems:

    • U+200E – left-to-right mark
    • U+200F – right-to-left mark

    For the digit order problem, try putting left-to-right marks (U+200E) on both sides of the digit sequence.

    Unicode also has the following bidi formatting codes:

    • U+202A – left-to-right embedding
    • U+202B – right-to-left embedding
    • U+202C – pop directional formatting (cancels the previous embedding or override)
    • U+202D – left-to-right override
    • U+202E – right-to-left override

    For the problem with English fragments in Hebrew text, it might be as simple as putting a right-to-left mark before the English. (Android’s algorithm may be under the impression that the paragraph is left-to-right since the first characters are English.) If that doesn’t work, perhaps try surrounding selected text with some combination of formatting codes. (I’d try left-to-right embedding followed by pop directional formatting. I’d also try right-to-left embedding around everything combined with selective explicit right-to-left embeddings.)

    The way these are supposed to affect text layout are defined by the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm Unicode Standard Annex #9. However, if Android’s implementation is broken (and I suspect it is), the best you can do is trial-and-error until you get things looking right. Good luck.

    EDIT

    As far as code is concerned, here’s an example of how it might be done in Java:

    String text = "גרסה \u200e2.100\u200e זמינה";

    In XML, it might be:

    <string name="update_available">גרסה &#x200e;2.100&#x200e; זמינה</string>
    • 0