base direction of text boxes in RTL gtk2 programs

[Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir technion ac il>]

Hi

I've been using some gtk2/gnome2 programs with a Hebrew locale for quite
a while now.

Frankly I'm quite unsatisfied with the whole base direction
determination:

As you recall, the bidi specs leave open the setting of the base
direction. If I have the text (capRTL):

  % hi, THERE"

It will become:

  "EREHT ,hi %     (base direction: rtl)
  % hi, EREHT"     (base direction: ltr)


The default base direction of a gtk input widget is set based on 
LC_MESSAGES: if the program is to display messages in an RTL language,
its interface should be "reversed". Thus all the widgets get a defualt
rtl attribute.

For text widgets this means that the text is alligned to the right. For
tab headers: show the right part of the text (rather than the left part).

A number of places where this is a problem:

LTR inputs:
* the username prompt of gdm: a username is always ascii. The password
  prompt is always ascii as well (the contant password [*]* or none, I
  don't remember )
* The address bar of galeon: only used for URLs (not even search terms)

LTR labels:
* The label of galeon tabs? It depends on whether the title is RTL or
  LTR. Isn't it possible to show the "beggining" of the title?
* I didn't experiment with long enough file names in various text
  editors
* Something similar: The input line on xchat doesn't scroll
  automatically what you write too much text: you are only shown the
  beggining of the line, instead of the end of the line. Your cursor is
  always in the beginning of the line.


* Chanels with Hebrew content, as presented in XChat, are an interesting
  design chalange. The nick is usually LTR (though it may be RTL. I
  think I saw some). And thus you can have something like:

  <nick1> SAYS SOMETHING

The chars "<>" may be shown differently if they are near an RTL char. 
and '>nick<' naturally has a different meaning than '<nick>'...

I started filing bugs for the galeon ones, but then I figured that there
should be some more general things here...

Comments?

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen                       +---------------------------+
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend|
mailto:tzafrir technion ac il       +---------------------------+