Ara

A command line tool that correctly displays Arabic text in terminals.

Installation

Check releases and download the archive for your OS and architecture directly.

On macOS or Linux, this fetches the right archive, extracts the binary, and adds it to your $PATH:

OS=$(uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
ARCH=$(uname -m); case "$ARCH" in x86_64) ARCH=amd64 ;; aarch64|arm64) ARCH=arm64 ;; esac
curl -L "https://github.com/latiif/ara/releases/latest/download/ara_${OS}_${ARCH}.tar.gz" | tar xz ara
chmod +x ara && mv ara /usr/local/bin/

On Windows, download the matching .zip from the releases page.

Key Features

• 🆕 Correctly renders Arabic mixed with quotes, tags, numbers, and other non-Arabic content, using the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. Works for plain text as well as structured files like JSON, YAML, TOML, and XML.
• Undotting of Arabic letters (Rasm).
• Revamped command line interface.
• Add option to use files as input and/or output in the tool.
• RTL line wrap and RTL line padding. (Depending on terminal width).
• RTL rendering in terminals. (Right alignment).
• Glyphes and ligatures for لآ,لا,لأ,لإ.
• Full support (including RTL) for Tashkeels (One tashkeel per letter).

Usage

When displaying Arabic text in terminals, it is shown incorrectly.

With Ara, you can send in Arabic text and it will display correctly. In addition, the output can be right-aligned with smart line breaks accomodating to terminal width.

You can use Ara to undot letters according to Rasm rules.

Synopsis

Correctly displays Arabic text in terminals
Usage:
  ara [flags]
  ara [command]

Available Commands:
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  help        Help about any command
  undot       Removes the dots of Arabic letters
  version     Print the version number of ara

Flags:
  -a, --adjust-right    Adjust output text to be rtl (useful when in shell, less so if you want to pipe into a file)
  -h, --help            help for ara
  -i, --input string    Apply command on the contents of the input file.
  -o, --output string   Write output to specified file.

Use "ara [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Font support

Unfortunately, not all monospace fonts support Arabic text fully. Here is a list of known fonts with good support for Arabic.

• DejaVu Sans Mono
• Kawkab Mono
• Liberation Mono
• Monospace
• Nimbus Mono L

Building from source

• Clone the repo.
• Run make.
• Run the produced binary ara.

Disclaimer

This tool is based on goarabic under MIT license, with additional functionalities.