Are there terminal emulators that support bi-directional text?

Question

I tried searching for this but came out empty-handed. Is it possible for me to get my terminal emulator to display right-to-left Unicode grapheme clusters properly?

Use case: I'm writing a script that outputs Arabic letters to the terminal and it's currently outputting the glyphs in reverse order, which messes up the way they're supposed to connect, making them visually difficult to read.

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 12 '13 at 19:47

9

I haven't used it as I don't speak Arabic, but this gets decent reviews: http://mlterm.sourceforge.net/

See also:

A Quick Primer on Unicode and Software Internationalization under Linux and Unix.

edited Nov 12 '13 at 19:47

Joseph R.

39,549

answered Nov 11 '13 at 19:55

Mike Diehn

1,008

3

see also http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/ – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 11 '13 at 20:04
Exactly what I needed. Thank you very much. I added the link provided by @StephaneChazelas to the answer because it's really useful. Thanks to both of you – Joseph R. Nov 12 '13 at 19:48

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 28 '14 at 07:52

4

konsole does and supports bidirectional writing

answered Sep 28 '14 at 07:52

akiva

196

I just tried it and it does. Thank you for your input. – Joseph R. Sep 28 '14 at 08:13
Yes but not ZWJ grapheme cluster. – noraj Aug 17 '23 at 09:47

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 16 '18 at 14:02

2

konsole supports it as built-in, BUT on other terminal emulators, you need to install BiCon (bidirectional console).

edited Oct 16 '18 at 14:02

Stephen Kitt

434,908

answered Mar 04 '17 at 12:56

Farhad Mohammadi Majd

31

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 12 '19 at 11:21

1

GNOME Terminal version 3.34 supports right to left scripts, and so do other VTE-based emulators (e.g. Tilix, Terminator, Xfce Terminal, Guake...) if using VTE version 0.58.

answered Sep 12 '19 at 11:21

egmont

5,866

Are there terminal emulators that support bi-directional text?

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