android / android/nowinandroid

[Bug]: Text artifacts in RTL layout

Open
#1,874 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
bug
Dominant language
Kotlin
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

### Is there an existing issue for this?

- [x] I have searched the existing issues

### Is there a StackOverflow question about this issue?

- [x] I have searched StackOverflow

### What happened?

When the device locale is set to a right-to-left (RTL) language such as Arabic, text in the app displays incorrectly: periods, question marks, and exclamation marks appear at the beginning of the last line in a text block instead of at the end.

I'm also thinking about whether the English should be aligned to the right, or maybe to the left. In the View system, when a `TextView` is `match_parent`, Android aligns the English to the left (based on the first strong directional character), regardless of the fact that device language is RTL.

Are there RTL language users who could share their expectations regarding English text alignment in RTL contexts?

**Android 14 emulator, Arabic locale**

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/83798e63-badc-48d0-9a3c-1a2f0331d72c

### Relevant logcat output

```shell

```

### Code of Conduct

- [x] I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are identified in the issue. Start by reproducing the text rendering on an Android 14 emulator with an Arabic locale, then trace the affected text block and its RTL behavior; done means punctuation renders correctly and the English-alignment expectation is resolved.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
android, kotlin
Domain
internationalization, mobile
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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