How to prevent the OS X text layout engine from automatically "flipping" lines with right-to-left text?

Question

How do I make Apple's Cocoa GUI controls not automatically "flip" lines that contain right-to-left text (such as arabic)?

Behold my test case, wherein I plan to keep the asterisks (**) in the beginning of the lines when they are printed on screen:

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    NSAutoreleasePool *autoReleasePool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];

    NSString *str1 = @"** english first then arabic تجر\n";
    NSString *str2 = @"** تجر arabic first then english\n";
    [str1 writeToFile:@"/dev/stdout" atomically:NO encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:NULL];
    [str2 writeToFile:@"/dev/stdout" atomically:NO encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:NULL];

    [autoReleasePool release];
    return 0;
}

When I run this in Terminal.app I get:

$ gcc -framework Foundation test.m
$ ./a.out
** english first then arabic تجر
arabic first then english تجر **

In iTerm, though, the lines don't get "flipped":

$ gcc -framework Foundation test.m
$ ./a.out
** english first then arabic تجر
** تجر arabic first then english

Based on some cursory examination of iTerm's code, it looks like this is due to iTerm's "manual" character-by-character handling of output and Terminal.app's (assumed) use of OS-native string layout APIs. Is there any way to prevent this "flippage" from occurring when using, for example, NSTextView to display these kinds of strings? I couldn't find any answers in Apple's documentation.

I'm running an english Mac OS 10.5.6 with english as the #1 language in the list under System Preferences > International > Language.

Answer 1

Have you tried:

[nstextviewobj setBaseWritingDirection:NSWritingDirectionLeftToRight];

This method is in the NSText parent class.