Re: GTK+ recent manager and RTL issues

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 19:27 +0000, Djihed Afifi wrote:

> If the application is started in RTL, and the filename is in LTR
> characters, the recent menu name is rendered LTR and that is ugly for
> RTL languages.
> 
> The same thing happens when filename is RTL and app is LTR.
> 
> Here is a screenshot:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=102707&action=view
> 
> 
> I started fixing this by patching the applications directly, forcing
> them to make the menu item to be RTL by using RLM.
> 
> Some developers rightfully suggested that handling this should probably
> belong to GTK+, by prepending RLM or LRM based on the direction of the
> application using gtk_widget_get_default_direction(). The shortcuts
> (numbers) are direction neutral so they will align correctly.
> 
> My own opinion is that this belongs to the applications since
> gtkrecentmanager is not directly handling the presentation of the recent
> menu lists, even though it may look bad at first to fix it for all
> applications that have a recent menu list.
> 
> What do GTK+ developers think?

the question is: are these applications using the default widgets
provided by GTK+ (GtkRecentChooser implementations) or their own? if
GtkRecentChooserMenu doesn't work correctly, I'll gladly patch it
because it means it's a bug; if those applications are generating their
menus themselves, then it's an application bug and I can't see a way for
GTK+ to avoid it without letting those application fix their own widgets
anyway. basically, if applications are handling thins themselves, then
their are on their own.

GtkRecentManager does not handle the presentation of the list in any
way; if developers are using custom widgets to view the resources
retrieved using the manager, then it's up to them to handle text
directionality and the other i18n issues.

if someone wrote a GtkRecentChooserInlineMenu and submitted it for
inclusion, I would gladly review the patch; personally, I dislike the
inline presentation[1], even though I know there are some fans of that
way of displaying the recent files list (basically, the maintainers of
the applications you opened a bug against).

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

+++

[1] I know, I know: "the HIG says that". well the HIG is text, and it
can be wrong too. I've considered all the rationales people have
presented to me for the inline list, and I found them not convincing.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi,
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.net
B: http://log.emmanuelebassi.net