Right to left support

[Shayx]

the thing that's driving me crazy in windows phone apps
is the lack of support for RTL languages for hebrew or arabic.

that means that the punctuation is LTR.

for example (in english):
?hey, how are you


the apps that doesn't support it is facebook, viber, whatsapp...
is it really that hard for the app to identify the direction of typing when using RTL language?!
it works just fine on android. and it works just fine on the wp8 native mail and massaging apps.


EDIT: sorry opened the thread in ATIV S, this should be on WP8 general discussion. can a mod move it plz?

 

[Laura Knotek]

The issue has to do with those apps, not the device or OS itself. Windows Phone 8 supports the languages, but not all apps are available in all languages. Going global: Language support in Windows Phone 8

 

[hopmedic]

Yeah, it's up to the developer to support the language in his app. Microsoft has made it easier, but there is still work to making it happen.

 

[hopmedic]

Might I make a suggestion? Contact developers of apps that you want in RTL. Let them know that you want RTL support. Perhaps even volunteer to help them with adding it, since many times we as developers develop what we know. Myself, one of my apps is localized to six languages, one of which is German. A German user contacted me and offered to help with translation, since Bing and Google got it wrong. Now I have greater confidence in the German translation of my app.

 

[Shayx]

I'd love to help. i'm highly technical but i'm not a developer.
i don't mind about the translation of the app as much as i'm interested in RTL support.
i write to the developers in the store reviews and in other places but i get no replies or attention.
i'm not complaining about the OS, but about the apps that have that support for other platforms.

 

[hopmedic]

If you put your comments in the store reviews, there is no way for a developer to reply. That has been one of our complaints since the start. Contact them through their contact info in the app, or if they list an email address in the store listing.