README

A lightweight PHP library for correcting Devanagari i-matra (ि) rendering order in systems that do not perform Unicode shaping — such as legacy PDF generators, canvas renderers, or custom font engines.

The Problem

In Unicode logical order, the short-i matra (U+093F) is stored after its consonant:

क + ि  →  stored as  U+0915 U+093F

Modern browsers and OS text stacks reorder this visually. But legacy renderers (FPDF, TCPDF, canvas, some PDF libs) render characters left-to-right in byte order, producing:

कि  →  displays as  कि  ✓  (modern)
कि  →  displays as  कि  ✗  (legacy — matra appears on the wrong side)

This library physically swaps the bytes so legacy renderers display the correct result.

Features

✅ Simple consonants: क + ि → ि + क
✅ Combining nukta forms: ड + ़ + ि → ि + ड + ़
✅ Pre-composed nukta forms: ज़ (U+095B) + ि → ि + ज़
✅ Deep conjunct clusters: स्त्र + ि → ि + स्त्र (unlimited depth)
✅ HTML-safe: only text nodes are processed, attributes are untouched
✅ Invisible marker stripping (BOM, ZWNJ, ZWJ)
✅ Batch array reshaping
✅ Cheap pre-check via needsReshaping()

Requirements

PHP 8.0+
ext-mbstring

Installation

composer require imsoft-dev/devanagari-reshaper

Usage

Plain text

use Devanagari\Reshaper\DevanagariReshaper;

$reshaped = DevanagariReshaper::reshapeText('किताब');

HTML (tag-safe)

$html = '<p>किसान</p><span class="nav-link">विकास</span>';
$out  = DevanagariReshaper::reshapeHtml($html);
// Tag attributes are never modified — only text node content is reshaped

Array of strings

$rows = DevanagariReshaper::reshapeArray(['किसान', 'विकास', 'Hello']);

Guard check (performance)

if (DevanagariReshaper::needsReshaping($text)) {
    $text = DevanagariReshaper::reshapeText($text);
}

How it works

A consonant cluster is defined as:

cluster = consonant_unit (virama consonant_unit)*

Where a consonant_unit is:

consonant_unit = (pre-composed-nukta-form | base-consonant + optional-combining-nukta)

The regex finds every cluster + i-matra sequence and moves the i-matra to the front:

[cluster][U+093F]  →  [U+093F][cluster]

Running tests

composer install
./vendor/bin/phpunit

License

MIT

imsoft-dev / devanagari-reshaper

Maintainers

Package info

Statistics

Security