Hi there, new Zorin OS user here.
I often type with both English layout and Arabic layout (written from right to left), on windows i can click left control + left shift to switch to English layout, and the text cursor would move all the way to the left, and when i click right control + right shift, the text cursor would move all the way to the right (known as Switching text direction), this for some reason doesn't work on Zorin OS or any ubuntu based distro as far as i know, i can only switch the layout by clicking super + space and the cursor would stay where it is, on the left.
for someone who uses libreoffice and often switches between different keyboard layouts, this is frustrating.
I saw so many people on the internet talk about this issue with some posts being 10 years old and the issue is still there unfortunetaly.
I tried some solutions like Ibus and Fcitx (system wide) but its so complicated to make them work, at least for a noobie like me. please help.
(By the way, LibreOffice's "Right to left" feature moves all the text to the right and not just the text cursor, so its still useless)
Thanks.
Hello, and welcome to Zorin OS.
I'm not familiar with LTR inputs but I'm able to switch the cursor position after I press Enter to go to the next line. Depending on the input language I have selected, it jumps to either the left or right positions accordingly.
Other than that, if this isn't what you're after, I'd recommend asking about this in the Document Foundation forums. The community might only be able or willing to assist with Libre Office specifically, but they might be more knowledgeable about this type of issues all around so it's worth asking anyway.
I found here an article about changing the text direction in libre office. It is in German, I hope you can translate it with your browser.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1305241/how-to-change-text-direction-in-libreoffice
I actually hadn't tried in LibreOffice, but on the Text Editor app. There, simply switching language with Super+Space is enough to have the writing orientation to change accordingly (after dropping into the next line).
But LibreOffice Writer seems to do things differently, a bit more involved:
- Ctrl+Shift+A → Left To Right.
- Ctrl+Shift+S → Right To Left.
The challenging thing about it is that this keyboard shortcuts only seem to work while I'm on the English layout because of the keys needed. I assume it's possible to create another shortcuts that match the Arabic language, so that they map to the same physical key positions on the keyboard.
So, while this works, is not as simple as in some other input fields. You need to make use of the shortcut explicitly.
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