linux CLI: how to render Arabic text into bitmap

Question

I would like to draw Arabic text into bitmap (bmp or png) with command line interface.

I have tried imagemagick and RMagick, but I have problem with RTL language issue. all my rendering are left to right. And google is not helping.

require:

./render "لوحة المفاتيح" out.png

would give a bitmap:

لوحة المفاتيح

Anyone can give me some successful results?

Answer 1

Anyone can give me some successful results?

I can. I use convert from ImageMagick:

echo لوحة المفاتيح > text.txt && \
convert -size 300x200 \
        -background white \
        -fill black \
        -font /usr/share/fonts/truetype/droid/DroidNaskh-Regular.ttf \
        -pointsize 24 \
        -gravity Center \
        label:@text.txt \
        text.png

This is the result:

Some notes:

1. You need to use a font which defines the used characters (in your case an arabic font)
2. Always use a temporary file with the text inside instead of provide the text directly from the command line: it would lead to weird results

UPDATE I didn't notice the RTL part of the question; I think I got better results using pango (reference):

# On Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install libpango1.0-dev
echo -n لوحة المفاتيح > text.txt
pango-view text.txt --no-display --output text.png

Result: