Arabic Script in Opensesame

Adil · July 2016

Opensesame is a quite practical cross-platform software, which I have started using it recently. Unfortunately, I encountered a problem in displaying texts written in Arabic, despite setting the language and selecting Arabic as indicated in the application. The text can actually be written in Arabic in the instruction box for example, but when running the experiment, it will be displayed as empty squares, or unconnected and reversed letters of the Arabic script.
Thus, I would be very much grateful if there is any way to overcome this problem or maybe consider it for the next version.
Thank you very much in advance and I highly appreciate your time and consideration.

sebastiaan · July 2016

Hi Adil,

Would you mind uploading the experiment, or a simple experiment that demonstrates the problem?

Cheers!
Sebastiaan

Adil · July 2016

Hi Sebastiaan,
for illustration, below is a screenshot of instructions written in Arabic.

kindest regards,

Adil

sebastiaan · July 2016

Hi Adil,

An actual script with a detailed description of what doesn't work and what you would like to happen would have been more helpful! In any case, have you enabled bidirectional-text support on the General Properties tab?

http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.1/manual/stimuli/text/#bi-directional-text-support

Cheers,
Sebastiaan

Adil · July 2016

Dear Sebastiaan,
I've enabled bi-directional-text support but the problem still could not be solved, where the script is unreadable and the letters are not connected to each other.
Here is how the actual text should look like:

ارشادات عامة قبل اجراء التجربة
في هذه التجربة سترى مجموعة من الأشكال الهندسية ومواد من الحياة اليومية
المطلوب منك الاستجابة بسرعة لتحديد نوعية الصورة المعروضة
اضغط الزر الأيمن اذا كانت الصورة تمثل شكل هندسي او الزر الأيسر اذا كانت الصورة المعروضة تشير الى أشكال اخرى
شكرًا جزيلا على المشاركة

Regards,
Adil

sebastiaan · July 2016

So this woud be correct, right?

If so, then it works fine for me. (Although I do see problems with newlines, but that should be easy to work around.)

What package of OpenSesame do you use, i.e. what version and operating system? And is python-bidi even installed? If it isn't, you should see a warning on the General Properties tab if you try to enable bidirectional text support. On OpenSesame 3.1 (but not before) you can install python-bidi by running the following in the debug window:

import pip
pip.main(['install', 'python-bidi'])

Adil · July 2016

I use version 3.1 and installed python-bidi as you have mentioned. Now it is much more better than before exactly as your text shows, where the text is now comprehensible and readable but the problem is still that the letters are not connected. For example the third word should appear connected as قبل and not as isolated letters: ق ب ل

Many thanks!

sebastiaan · July 2016

Hi Adil,

This may be as good as it gets. I'm not sure if the font renderer is able to write properly connected Arabic characters. But it's worth a last try. If I were you, I would try a few different fonts, and see if they all suffer from the same issue. If you find a font that looks good, let me know. Note that a font must contain Arabic characters, otherwise you will see rectangles when running the experiment--even if it looks good in the user interface.

As a fallback solution, you could also use images, of course.

Cheers,
Sebastiaan

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