Tinderbox does a good job to display Hebrew text in the note field. But it still isn’t capable of displaying the same text in the note title field, not in map or outline view nor in the text view (screenshot shows the text view and another shot of the map view).
Even in the note field it was wrong when I typed it in, but this could be corrected via context window / Writing Direction / Left to Right. If I try the same in the note title field, however, it gets right, too, but only as long as I click away, then it jumps back to the wrong order.
Since it works as long as the text is highlighted, this should be a minor bug, I think. Or does it work on your device?
This is the Hebrew/English text, if you may try it:
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים are the first three words in Genesis.
Even in this browser field it works, but not in Tinderbox. Can this be fixed, or is there a workaround I didn’t think of?
This problem involving embedded left-to-right and right-to-left languages is known.
The last time I took a run at this, I consulted with some of the real experts at macOS text, and none of us could solve it. It’s time for another tilt at this windmill; I have an idea where the problem might be hiding.
Oliver, great post, and nice emphasis on the multilingual capabilities of Tinderbox (a nice contribution or our 5Cs TBX 101 Cohort). I’m glad that @eastgage has picked on it.
YES!!! It works!!! Finally, after all these years!!! Thank you so much!!! This was a major obstacle for me to use Tinderbox. It would be even better if one could define for a Tinderbox file to prefer always Left-to-Right or Right-to-Left in the preferences. This way it would be even easier and much faster to work with different writing directions. Maybe in a future release …
I believe it uses the dominant language of your system for the default text order. But of course that’s inconvenient if you have one Tinderbox file in French for your syllabus and another in Hebrew for your shopping.
Well, I think the problem is rooted a bit deeper. If it would follow the system default (German, Left to Right), when I type Hebrew and then German it should be right automatically. But it isn’t right, I have to manually correct the writing direction for each note. That is, I think, because it follows the rules of the text engine you use for these fields. This engine tries to be smart, so if there is Hebrew or Arabic or any other RTL language at the beginning of a paragraph it turns everything to Right to Left, if not it uses LTR. So I think it would be even better if you could overwrite this behavior and let the user choose for each Tinderbox file what its writing direction should be. I’ve discussed this with other developers in the last two decades and some were willing to do so. E.g. the nvUltra developers gave us a dropdown menu in the preferences. Easy, clean, works. No correction necessary.
This has already consumed a ton of resources over an extended period of time. Not just my resources: solving this took help from the developers of BBEdit, Counterparts, Trickster, Melell, and more.
Eyal Redler from Mellel is the best, he knows his stuff. Years ago, BBEdit had a version that could do this, but they did not know why, so they have lost it. The current version is useless in this regard. Now I have to work with other text editors. I don’t know about the others you mentioned.
It is great that you are willing! I think that we all agree on this: Writing notes should be effortless in Tinderbox. In Hebrew, it is now possible with correction in each paragraph. That is okay, but not effortless yet.
So many folks want fancy functions. I just want to write notes in Tinderbox. And I (and many others) write in more than one language. Enabling to write in Tinderbox––something basic, I would say––should be worth every resource of Tinderbox, the tool for notes. So you are on a good way. Thank you for your ongoing good work.