Displaying Arabic characters in C# console application

Solution 1:

There are several issues to resolve to get this to work.

  • You need a font that supports both Arabic AND the windows console.

See KB : Necessary criteria for fonts to be available in a command window

The font must be a fixed-pitch font.
The font cannot be an italic font.
The font cannot have a negative A or C space.
If it is a TrueType font, it must be FF_MODERN.
If it is not a TrueType font, it must be OEM_CHARSET.
  • You must install the font.

For testing, I used DejaVu Mono, which is one of the few that supports Arabic. Arabic is a tough language to make a monotype font with since the aesthetics of the language do not work well with a fixed width for each character. Nevertheless, this font makes an honest effort. For other possible alternatives, see :

complete, monospaced Unicode font?

The font must be installed in the normal way for your version of Windows (in Vista/7/8 this is right-click, Install on the .ttf file). Once this is done, you have to follow the directions in the KB.

  1. Registry Editor --> HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont
  2. Add a new string value named "000" with the value DejaVu Sans Mono
  3. Reboot

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Once you've rebooted, you can change the font in the console by selecting "Properties" from the console menu and changing the font in the "Font" tab.

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Result.

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... so after all that, we discover that the console does not support Right-To-Left languages. I guess you could use a function like :

static string Reverse(string text)
{
   if (text == null) return null; 
   char[] array = text.ToCharArray();
   Array.Reverse(array);
   return new String(array);
}

and then do

Console.OutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode;
Console.WriteLine(Reverse("مرحبا بك"));

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