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Right to left (RTL) support status 2015

Lior Kaplan

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Have you seen it?

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Have you seen it?

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Have you seen it?

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The basics

RTL interface != RTL supportDirectionality != alignment

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RTL interface != RTL support

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RTL interface != RTL support

Most users use UI in English, some users must use localized interface (kids who don't know English or due to a policy).

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Directionality != alignment

Mixed טקסט text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב !Mixed טקסט text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב !Mixed טקסט text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב!

Mixed טקסט text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב!

!text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב Mixed טקסט!text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב Mixed טקסט!text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב Mixedטקסט

!text 25-09-2015 ברועמעורב Mixedטקסט

Notice the weak directionality characters

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RTL bugs

Meta bug at tdf#43808Updated status at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/RTL_Bugs

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Bug types

Language support – happens only with a RTL language (e.g. tdf#55361 or tdf#56408)Directionality support – happens only with RTL directionality (e.g. tdf#32531)Interface problems – happens only with RTL interface (e.g. tdf#93352)Mixed of the above (e.g. tdf#56403).In addition – language specific requirements (e.g. Arabic but not Hebrew).

Notice: All example bugs still happen in LibreOffice 5.0.2 (Debian GNU/Linux, 64bit).

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What have changed (LibO 4.0)

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What have changed (LibO 4.1)

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What have changed (LibO 4.2)

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What have changed (LibO 4.3)

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What have changed (LibO 4.4)

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What have changed (LibO 5.0)

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But sometimes things go horribly wrong

Case story: tdf#89381 broke the RTL interface. Example screencast: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/attachment.cgi?id=113746

The bug got fixed for 5.1 (master) and backported to 5.0.2 and 4.4.6.

The process took very long, both detection (Nov 2014 to Feb 2015) and fix (Feb 2015 to Aug 2015).

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Or just get broken over new features (tdf#85767)

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All text and image content in this document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License (unless otherwise specified). "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks. Their respective logos and icons are subject to international copyright laws. The use of these therefore is subject to the trademark policy.

Thank you …

For fixing RTL bugs (or at least reporting them).