[Mailman-i18n] RTL and BiDi

Arash Zeini a.zeini@farsikde.org
Tue, 8 Oct 2002 09:58:15 +0330


On Monday 07 October 2002 14:42, Martin v. L=F6wis wrote:

> Arash Zeini <a.zeini@farsikde.org> writes:
> > I am new to this list. As far as I could see from the archives,
> > there is no development toward support for RTL and BiDi for
> > languages like Farsi and Arabic. Is this correct?
>
> What kind of support would you expect? From a mailman point of view,
> this issue does not exist, AFAICT.

I guess the problem may not exist if I post to a mailing list from within=
 an=20
email client that supports Farsi. OK, there might not be an issue.
But the problem may occur as soon as we talk about the archives, where HT=
ML is=20
generated. My guess is everything will be left-to-right and unreadable.

This is why I posted. While managing a mailing list I tried to enter some=
=20
description text in Farsi. Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew are written right-to-=
left=20
and all descriptions that I entered occurred just LTR. Also the generated=
=20
HTML in mailman does not use UTF-8 encoding why again we have a problem. =
I.e.=20
no browser would display any of these three languages correctly. One has =
to=20
set it manually to be able to read the text.

Finding a solution shouldn't be too complicated, as all of this is suppor=
ted=20
through HTML.=20

> Now, translating mailman to Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi languages is another
> story - contributions are certainly welcome.

You are right, this is another story. But even here we need the proper=20
structure in the HTML pages to be able to translate anything. We need=20
everything mirrored otherwise it is not useable. This is done through the=
=20
dir=3D"RTL" attribute in HTML. And we need UTF-8 as encoding in the heade=
r part=20
of the HTML page.

In KDE this problem is solved this way:
in the main .pot file there is one string which is not a translatable str=
ing=20
but the entry which denotes the text direction. I.e. the translator fills=
 in=20
the value RTL or LTR and according to this value the interface and text=20
direction is set. The same could be done in mailman I guess.

Now, if we have the time to work on the translation of Mailman so soon, t=
hat=20
is_another_story :)

Greetings,
Arash
--=20
The FarsiKDE Project
http://www.farsikde.org