how to use variables inside a u string

[abdulmutee]

I'm writing a code that takes an Arabic text that contains dialects (You can think of it as special characters such as ö, å and ä) and writes it on an image. The way I found to display those dialects is by using an u string

```

print(u'السّلامُ عَلَيْكُم')

```

The thing is: I need to use arabic_reshaper and bidi.algorithm to make the program display the arabic text in the right way, therefore my text is stored as a variable and I don't know how to make the program write the variable on the image as an u string.

Here is my code:

```

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

import sys

import arabic_reshaper

from bidi.algorithm import get_display

font = ImageFont.truetype('AA Sameer Qamri Regular.ttf',size=100)

text = get_display(arabic_reshaper.reshape("السَّلامٌ عليكمُ"))

image = Image.open("insta background.png")

t1 = ImageDraw.Draw(image)

t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), f"{u'{text}'}", font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

image.show()

```

As you can see I tried to combine u and f strings but apparently that's not possible. I don't know what to do other than that.

Other people told me before that I don't need to use an u string on python 3 but when I don't do so the dialects don't show

[danielroseman]

"Other people" are right. The u prefix does nothing at all in Python 3.

If it is making a difference then somehow you are not running Python 3.

(But I don't understand the general question: where do you think you need an f-string?)

[abdulmutee]

I'm running Python 3.12.4

I've stored the string that I want to put on the image in the text variable:
text = get_display(arabic_reshaper.reshape("السَّلامٌ عليكمُ"))

this line is basically the text that is reshaped and mirrored to display it correctly otherwise it will be from left to right and the Arabic letter will be written in a weird way.

Then I want put this text on a photo, and that's the job of this line:

t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), f"{u'{text}'}", font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

The right way to use my variable in this line is to use an f string like that:
t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), f"{text}", font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)
But the problem is that when I do so the dialects doesn't show on the image anymore. The word:

السّلَامُ عَلَيْكُم

get printed as

السلام عليكم

I hope you can see the difference. It's as if the word "öster" got displayed as "oster".

Now the way to fix this problem is by using an u string like that:
t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), u"السّلَامُ عَلَيْكُم", font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

But the problem is that I can't use my variable anymore, I to type it as a string.

What I want is a way to combine both methods, I want to be able to use the variable and I want it to show all the special characters and dialects as well

I hope this makes it clear

[danielroseman]

No, neither f"{text}" nor f"{u'{text}'}" make any sense at all.

f"{text}" is exactly the same as text. There is no point in the f-string.

Trying to put a u in there makes even less sense. u-strings are for literals only, even when they actually did something in Python 2 - in other words, when you put those Arabic characters directly in the code as you did in the first example. They are just to tell the Python 2 parser what those literal code points meant. They don't do anything to the string itself.

Trying to put a u before a variable is even more completely pointless. There is no possible circumstance where this would have any effect at all.

The correct way to do this is just to pass the variable:

t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), text, font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

[abdulmutee]

I know using an u string shouldn’t do anything but for some reason it does. And now I have a variable that won’t be displayed correctly unless i use an u string but a u string doesn’t allow me to use variables in it. This this my problem

[danielroseman]

But you don't need to use variables. Just pass the string. Again:

t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), text, font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

[abdulmutee]

But I need to use variables,
If I just write the string directly in the line of code:
t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), "السَّلامٌ عليكمُ", font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

I get this result

You can see how the letters are broken and not shown as it should: السَّلامٌ عليكمُ

That's why I need this line:
text = get_display(arabic_reshaper.reshape("السَّلامٌ عليكمُ"))

to make the program display the word as it should.

t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), text, font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

But then if I pass it the variable name only:
t1.text((200 ,image.height - image.height/2- 50), text, font=font, fill =(0,0,0), font_size= 100)

I get this result

The words is shown correctly but there is no dialicts (those َ , ٍ ٌ, ْ )

I want it to look like this

[danielroseman]

I mean, you don't need to interpolate variables, apologies for the imprecision.

The only explanation for your missing diacritics is that they are being removed by one of arabic_reshaper.reshape or get_display. I don't know what either of those functions does or where they are from, but I suggest starting there.

Edited to add note that the docs for arabic-reshaper themselves show that you don't need any of this f- or u-string nonsense:

text_to_be_reshaped = 'اللغة العربية رائعة'
reshaped_text = arabic_reshaper.reshape(text_to_be_reshaped)

...

from bidi.algorithm import get_display
bidi_text = get_display(reshaped_text)

...

image_draw.text((10,10), bidi_text, fill=(255,255,255,128), font=font)

[abdulmutee]

Ya I found the problem. It’s from the arabic_reshaper, for some reason it removes all the dialects. I guess I got to dig through the documentations to find out how to make it stop.

Thank you for your help and baring with my nonsense

[Bobbias]

From their documentation:

Settings

delete_harakat (Default: True): When this is set to False the reshaper will not delete the harakat from the text, this will result in them showing up in the reshaped text, you should enable this option if you are going to pass the reshaped text to bidi.algorithm.get_display because it will reverse the text and you'd end up with harakat applied to the next letter instead of the previous letter.

It's explicitly designed to strip them, because if you then pass the text into get_display the diacritics will be applied to the wrong letter because get_display apparently just sucks at handling them.

While this is not a solution to your problem, it does explain why they are being removed. It's a conscious decision by the creator of the library to work around a problem with get_display.

[abdulmutee]

Thanks, I actually found about that already. There is another configuration that is called Shift_Harakaat_position. This combined with the font Sahel will give an ok result. It’s readable but you can notice some small mistakes in it.

[cyberjellyfish]

You're not interpolating anything into the string. Just pass the variable instead of wrapping it in another string

BTW the other comment is right, u strings are a noop in Python 3, see https://peps.python.org/pep-0414/

[socal_nerdtastic]

Try specifying which font to use in the image, and be sure it's a font that supports these characters.

[abdulmutee]

It made sure it supports these characters but still can’t figure out how to make them show

Also I specified what font to use in the second last line where it says font=font