RTL mark insertion behavior

Question

Paratext automatically inserts 0x200f RTL marks inside of references to get the logical order (chapter:startverse-endverse) to look correct in RTL languages.

However, it seems like sometimes it's not getting inserted, and I'm struggling to figure out what is or isn't triggering it. So I'm looking for the logical rules that PT uses, like "in this context, do this".

1) It seems like they 0x200f markers get inserted when typing a reference in \xt...\xt* markers, but not when they're just written in plain text. Is that correct?

2) I'm assuming that changing the "Reference order" in Scripture Reference Settings from Book Chapter Verse to Book Verse Chapter, changes this behavior, with the first of those adding 0x200f before every : and -, and the 2nd option not adding them before :, but only before -.

3) The behavior another user is reporting to me looks visually like endverse-chapter:startverse. I'm pretty sure that means there's no 0x200f added in at all (I don't have access to the actual text). What would cause that? Typing the reference before adding \xt? (see #1)

Comments

Did you re-post this? I could have sworn I answered this question yesterday.

Nevermind, I just saw the email about this.

Answer 1

1. The RTL marks are automatically inserted for the following styles: \r, \ior, \sr, \mr, \fig, \rq, \xt, \fr, \xo, \xop, \xta, \xot, \xnt, \xdc
   The RTL marks are inserted via the following Regular Expression. [\u200E\u200F]*(\d+\w?)[\u200E\u200F]*([PUNCT_PAT])[\u200E\u200F]*(?=\d) (where PUNCT_PAT is replaced with the the reference punctuation for the project).
2. Yes, the "Reference order" setting changes what happens. It makes it insert RLT or LTR characters.
3. Hard to know what happened. A way to manually trigger another scan is to use Project > Advanced > Standardize whitespace. That will rescan the entire project for missing RTL marks, but beware that it will also standardize all whitespace in the entire project.