[Mailman-i18n] RTL and BiDi

Arash Zeini a.zeini@farsikde.org
Tue, 8 Oct 2002 14:01:20 +0330


On Tuesday 08 October 2002 13:23, Martin v. L=F6wis wrote:

> Arash Zeini <a.zeini@farsikde.org> writes:
> > But the problem may occur as soon as we talk about the archives,
> > where HTML is generated. My guess is everything will be
> > left-to-right and unreadable.
>
> Did you try? My guess is that it comes out correctly, since the Web
> browser will do RTL.

No, I didn't try. Usually the web browser doesn't do the RTL automaticall=
y, if=20
this is what you mean. Wouldn't it need the dir attribute?=20
I guess the best way to try is to have a test mailman 2.1. Is it worth it=
 to=20
try on older versions?  And is there such a testing installation anywhere=
, or=20
should i set one for myself?

> > This is why I posted. While managing a mailing list I tried to enter
> > some description text in Farsi. Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew are written
> > right-to-left and all descriptions that I entered occurred just LTR.
>
> When entering them, or when Mailman was displaying them back?

While Mailman was displaying them back.

> > Also the generated HTML in mailman does not use UTF-8 encoding why
> > again we have a problem.
>
> What Mailman version? I don't think UTF-8 is strictly necessary -
> wouldn't ISO-8859-6 work as well?

UTF-8 is the recommended one for Farsi. ISO-8859-6 works best for Arabic.

> > I.e.  no browser would display any of these three languages
> > correctly. One has to set it manually to be able to read the text.
>
> Did you configure Mailman to change the encoding of the pages?

No. I was not aware of this feature. Is UTF-8 a supported encoding.
And please note that I am not a Mailman expert. I encountered a problem a=
nd=20
contacted the list to make suggestions.

> > You are right, this is another story. But even here we need the
> > proper structure in the HTML pages to be able to translate
> > anything. We need everything mirrored otherwise it is not useable.
> > This is done through the dir=3D"RTL" attribute in HTML.
>
> I think this can go into the page templates.

I had a look at the distribution package and understand the structure bet=
ter=20
now.=20
True the templates would be the easiest place.

> > in the main .pot file there is one string which is not a
> > translatable string but the entry which denotes the text
> > direction. I.e. the translator fills in the value RTL or LTR and
> > according to this value the interface and text direction is set. The
> > same could be done in mailman I guess.
>
> I think it can be solved in a much simpler way.

What would be the recommended way?

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