Re: base direction of text boxes in RTL gtk2 programs

[Noah Levitt <nlevitt columbia edu>]

On Wed, May 14, 2003 at  0:47:12 +0300, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> 
> 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 )

gdm should probably call gtk_widget_set_direction on these
widgets.

> * The address bar of galeon: only used for URLs (not even search terms)

Same thing.

>
> * 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 think the abbreviating happens in galeon somewhere... I'm
sure it could be improved.

>
> * 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.

Not sure what xchat does. A plain gtk entry seems to work as
I would expect it to.

> * 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>'...

According to RFC 1459:

   <nick>       ::= <letter> { <letter> | <number> | <special> }
   <letter>     ::= 'a' ... 'z' | 'A' ... 'Z'
   <number>     ::= '0' ... '9'
   <special>    ::= '-' | '[' | ']' | '\' | '`' | '^' | '{' | '}'

So it might be ok for xchat to do "LRE<nick>PDF" or
something similar. Of course not all irc software follows
the RFC that closely.

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

Most of your observations seem sort of specific and
non-general, so I'd encourage you to go on filing bugs. :-)

Noah