Debian – How to type a right to left language in terminal

command linedebiannanoright-to-left

I have installed Debian recently (without a GUI) to learn the CLI and C using the LearnCodeTheHardWay tutorials. Its going well, and I feel at this stage I do not need any GUI.

However, one thing I might need is to view, and edit in a right to left language, specifically Arabic using say… nano. Or with sqlite. Is that possible?

EDIT:
VIM or EMACS will be fine also. I do not mind the text editor. Also I would like to do this without install X, or any GUI stuff of any sort.

EDIT:
By Terminal what I understand is the black window with the $ symbol, which is what you get with the default Debian install. Its using Bash, and I use SSH to remote into it.

Best Answer

see comparison of text editors , do an intersection between "right-to-left and bidirectional text" and "text shell integration" .

:set lefttoright

for vim . see documentation and this question .

emacs generally can autodetect language and do the corresponding layout , on a per paragraph basis . see documentation .

Related Solutions

Terminal command vs. GUI drag & drop when copying large no. of files: Any tangible benefit

I don't really see a difference between copying many files and other tasks, usually what makes the command line more attractive is

simple tasks which are trivial enough for you to do on the command line, so that using the GUI would be a waste of time (faster to type a few characters than click in menus, if you know what characters to type);
very complex tasks which the GUI just isn't capable of doing.

There's another benefit I see to the command line in one very specific circumstance. If you're performing a very long operation, like copying many files, and you may want to check the progress while logged into your machine remotely, then it's convenient to see the task's progress screen. Then it's convenient to run the task in a terminal multiplexer like Screen or Tmux. Start Screen, start the task inside Screen, then later connect to your machine with SSH and attach to that Screen session.

Vim Tips – How to Type from Right to Left

Sure!

:set rightleft

Or, just rl. However, this will save the file with the characters in the order you typed them in. If you want to have it save it reversed, type :%!rev before saving.

Edit:

If you use the revins or ri option, the inserting is done backwards. You could probably map this to a key combination, but that's up to you.

Here is the appropriate section of vim help:

o  Typing backwards                 *ins-reverse*
----------------
In lieu of using full-fledged the 'rightleft' option, one can opt for
reverse insertion.  When the 'revins' (reverse insert) option is set,
inserting happens backwards.  This can be used to type right-to-left
text.  When inserting characters the cursor is not moved and the text
moves rightwards.  A <BS> deletes the character under the cursor.
CTRL-W and CTRL-U also work in the opposite direction.  <BS>, CTRL-W
and CTRL-U do not stop at the start of insert or end of line, no matter
how the 'backspace' option is set.

There is no reverse replace mode (yet).

If the 'showmode' option is set, "-- REVERSE INSERT --" will be shown
in the status line when reverse Insert mode is active.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Terminal command vs. GUI drag & drop when copying large no. of files: Any tangible benefit

Vim Tips – How to Type from Right to Left

Related Question