js-arabic-reshaper

Text reshaper for Arabic text - ported from Python and Java versions.

Context

Arabic script is very special with two essential features:

1. It is written from right to left.
2. The characters change shape according to their surrounding characters.

So when you try to print text written in Arabic script in an application – or a library – that doesn’t support Arabic you might end up with something that looks like this:

We have two problems here, first, the characters are in the isolated form, which means that every character is rendered regardless of its surroundings, and second is that the text is written from left to right.

This project does not solve the right-to-left issue, only the reshaping

Displayed in correct right-to-left order:

The only issue left to solve is to reshape those characters and replace them with their correct shapes according to their surroundings. Using this library helps with the reshaping so we can get the proper result like this:

Install and Use

On the command-line:

npm install js-arabic-reshaper --save

Then in the source code:

const Reshaper = require('arabic-reshaper');
Reshaper.reshape(arabicWord);

// options
Reshaper.reshape(arabicWord, {
  ligatures: true,
  delete_harakat: false
});

Tests

npm install
npm install mocha -g
mocha

License

Open source, GPL v3+ (same as Python Arabic Reshaper)