Obsidian version 1.6.3 RTL-direction feature auto-renders each line according to the language of the first word, and there is no way to set the RTL direction for the whole file.
Steps to reproduce
The steps to make the bug happen:
Create note in Obisidian with several lines in it
Start writing on one line the first word in an RTL language (e.g. Hebrew) and continue writing in a second language which is LTR (e,g, English).
Start writing on another line the first word in the second language, and continue writing in the first language.
Expected result
Proper settings to:
disaable/enable the auto-rendering of the RTL-direction,
set whether the RTL-direction will be determined
either (1) by the first word
or (2) by the paragraph
or (3) for the whole file
or (4) by the RTL-direction of the majority of the words in the line.
Actual result
You will end up with a file with inconsistent RTL-direction - some lines will be RTL, some - LTR.
Each line is auto-rendered according to the RTL-direction of its first word.
Environment
Desktop PC
OS: Windows 10 Pro
Additional information
It is annoying to the eye and difficult to read.
Also, considering the existing RTL issues Obsidian has, it is difficult to edit part of the text, especially if there are 2 different languages with different RTL-direction.
There should be a way to disable the new RTL feature and to add proper settings to set the RTL-direction as I mentioned here.
Thank you for the response.
Obsidian-rtl is less good than the “RTL Support” plugin, and because of the changes of the Obsidian version which cancel the plugin’s effect, I consider it a bug - something worked and now it is not.
I don’t mind it will be considered as a feature, as long as I’ll get back the functionality I need and used for a very long time.
So again, thank you.
I’ll appreciate a link to the FR you opened, to keep track on it as well.
I prefer you just remove the change you did to the RTL-direction, and only bring it back after you make a full and not partial fix.
The way it is now is worse than before, and I already started to move some of my things to a new platform - I just cannot handle Obsidian the way it is now.
Hi,
Listen, calling this BUG a “feature request” is wrong and it makes you prioritize it in a lower priority - this is a VERY SERIOUS BUG which slows my whole work for more than a month and who knows for how many more months,
it is becoming a deal braker whether to use Obsidian at all!
Please, revert the change you made with the language, and then add it again as a feature request (or whatever you wish to call it).
Please change it back to BUG and open a separate FR if you wish.
I understand you try to do something good with this change, but practically this change made the RTL handling much worse, impossible to override by other plugins and damaged a good community plugin which worked well and now it useless.
At least you have to revert this change and publish a small new version or a hotfix for the last version, and it should be very soon.
I am sorry but we think that the change we made is a net positive for most users and it aligned with the international standards on how to handle mixed text.
Are the satisfied users use RTL language mixed with LTR language in the same rows and files?
Since the standard for such cases is defining the text direction for the whole page, NOT for each row separately as you did.
When developing a feature, there should be a backward compatibility to it,
especially if your users are used to something for a very long time.
This case is without backward compatibility.
It is a very unpleasant user experience when forcing the users to change the way they work, not to mention make them work harder, after a very long time they are used for a certain way.
In order for you to understand, I’ll explain my case (which is very common world-wide):
In my formal work, we write in Hebrew (RTL) and use a lot of names and terms in English (LTR) that need to be quoted in their original language (English).
The formal documents I used to print were aligned properly, and after the last change in Obsidian I cannot use them or print them anymore, since they are not readable and look very bad because of the inconsistant alignment of each row.
I need to copy each file to another platform and to adjust the text (because of the markup language) in order to send and print it properly as part of my work.
This makes the usage in Obsidian redundant and forces me to work harder till I find a better platform and move all my files to it.
I’d rather not to do so, and to continue using Obsidian.
I really understand the good intention behind this change, but the truth is you haven’t developped this feature properly (it happens), so the least you need to do is to revert this change with a hotfix till you make it work properly and not partially as it is now.
I cannot add a Hebrew letter at the beginning of each row in order to align it, since I don’t want this letter to be printed.
So, this solution doesn’t solve the bug caused by this change of behavior.
As for the LTR/RTL mark characters at the beginning of a line, as I mentioned here, I cannot do so since I don’t want these characters to be printed,
and this is one of the reason why I find myself working harder using another platform in order to continue to use the files I have in Obsidian - I have hundreds of files and ALL of them combine English and Hebrew, so imagine the amount of work I need to do because of this bug.
