RTL Language & Encoding Problems

[Ageel]

Hi there


Just to inform. I don't know if somebody else did

here attached the snapshots that I got


my question, shouldn't Encoding of the page be with the language rather than the style?!!!
because, if all forum pages incoded with ISO-8859-1 then any other post posted with a language rather than English will be stored as Unicode, which will be 5 times the size as none unicode post, also, it will be hard to register with unicode since the user name is short


also, for any RTL language,
1. The Align='Right' must be Align='Left'
2. The Align='Left' must be Align='Right'
as for transforming from LTR to RTL

So, there must be a variable LANGUAGE_RIGHT_ALIGN$ and LANGUAGE_LEFT_ALIGN$ that we can exchange their values in the templates so the layout of the page will be perfect, you can see some in the attached pages.

Also, in AdminCP when I tried to Purne posts, I think you need to split that action into pages, because many servers will have different TIMEOUT period. So the attached image.

Thanx alot

Ageel

[Scott MacVicar]

Duplicate of http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=73753 but this one gives it in greater detail.

[orozery]

Here's a small solution for you in the meanwhile:
Create 4 replacement:
align="left" > align="wasleft"
align="right" > align="wasright"
align="wasleft" > align="right"
align="wasright" > align="left"
This is what I did in Hebrew and it works :)

[Ageel]

Nice Solution

I'll try it
it this would be Temp.. only
since it depends on the language that the user chose..

thanx

[Ahmad]

I've suggested long ago in the vb2 suggestions forum that such a mechanism to switch aligns should be made easy (among other suggestions).

Another point besides the align problem is images. Many images are direction biased.
i.e.: they assume that everything is left directed
e.g.: next and priv image arrows.

A quick solution just popped into my mind. This problem can be corrected by the FlipH CSS filter. If all the direction biased images are defined in HTML with a certain class (e.g.: directed), then it will be quick an easy to flip all these images using CSS:

.directed { filter: FlipH; }


Of course, this solution will only work in browsers that support this CSS filters feature. A compromise is better than no solution. Besides, old and feature lacking browsers usually don't even support Arabic or Hebrew support, so supporting them is irrelevant in RTL pages.

I've also suggested before that there should be a hard-coded (dir="ltr") in the tags surronding text that appears as formatted code (using the code bb tag). I'm sorry I'm just too lazy to test this and confirm if it has been fixed.

Which reminds me, there should be some bb code tags to force a certain direction. They can be easily added in the control panel, but standardizing them will be great.

That might just make it easier to add some direction support to the nice WYSIWYG editor of yours!

I guess that would be all for today :D
Thanks :)

[Ageel]

Hi Ahmad,

Nice to see somebody that discusses this issue here :)
so the VB will originally support Arabic and other RTL language be default instead of hacking it to do so.

at least, we all share the same problems that we face in our boards.

About the image flipping, I think it's a good Idean especially when we want to use one template for both RTL and LTR without the need to add another style with replacment variables :)


I would go with u regarding the CODE and PHP bbcode, I was so lazy to serach and modify it myself, I already have lot's of work to do other than hacking the board :)

anyway, thanx Ahmed and anybody participating in solving this issue

Ageel

[Ahmad]

You are welcome.
I suggest that you wait until last version is released ;)

You can actually achieve the same thing very easily with replacement variables. You can check this out in this draft I'm working on:
http://www.ahmadh.com/dev/i18n/bidi/

Look at the point about direction biased images :)

[Ageel]

Hi Ahmad, I already studied Arabization at my university, and I already know those methods and implementations should be be easy.

The problem here is only to make a webpage in multi-language basis. Which means many directions must be provided. and hopfully there is RTL direction. :)

I think, there should be a method to give the admin the ability to specify the images for each language rather than each style.. so, the image can have the (language,style) as a key if they will store them in the database just as an alternative solution (which might be expensive) :)

don't know, maybe I am right, and maybe, I am wrong
just a post :)

[Ahmad]

The images actually should be queried from a matrix according to its: name, style, direction, and language. An algorithm should be developed to select the best choice for the image. I could go on, but it won't be useful in here, because they're not gonna implement it.

[Ageel]

Hi Ahmad

nice idea, though I don't think they will implement it :(

by the way, they could use some of server side functions to do those things and use cache to reduce calculations so it will be independant from the client browser... :) right?!! that's so I can upload LTR style, then it will be automaically available to RTL languages as well from the first use of it :) and not need for user interaction here since it will be automated :)

any more ideas??

[Ahmad]

Yeah. I have MANY more ideas. They will make the new article in my i18n section.

[Mike Sullivan]

To be continued/resolved here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/bugs.php?do=view&bugid=165