I’m trying for format an interlinear project. The base text is Greek with Urdu glosses. The overall direction for the layout will be left-to-right, with the Urdu glosses intended in full right-to-left below the Greek words. Some of the Urdu glosses include spaces.
I have set up a basic layout successfully. Urdu (Arabic script) text flows right-to-left as expected. However, I cannot find a means to force full right–to-left for all text flow in the glosses. When a space occurs, the layout appears to revert to left-to-right for the duration of the space. Urdu text following the space flows right-to-left again. The result is 2 or 3 Urdu right-to-left strings in and overall left-to-right layout.
I wondered if I could force the directionality of the gloss|rb
style somehow, but I do not find an option for this in style’s font configuration.
Then I thought I might be able to add right-to-left marks (U+200F) before all spaces (or perhaps any other character needing this treatment) in changes.txt, like:
in "\|.*?\\rb\*": " " > "\u200f "
This does not have any effect.
I know that the expression above applies a change in the right location – because if I output an ‘_’ (underscore) in place of the space, then the Urdu text layout is fine (except for the underscore!). I’ve tried using alternative spacing characters, but they also revert left-to-right (unsurprisingly).
The above the strings should flow like this (using the underscore as a space)
Would there be any direction from anyone else who has tried this?
Jeff