RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL support

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I'll have to think about this for a little while. It isn't as simple as
you would think to swap between rtl and ltr languages.

I agree about the site logo being a param for each culture.=20

Just changing the position of the theme images will not work though. The
arrow pointing left will actually move modules to the right in rtl and
vice versa. The images themselves have to change. The tab layout page is
confusing in Arabic if the themes/layouts don't change. The left column
is actually the right column in the section where you add modules and
the arrows again are all backwards. Try moving a module from right
column to left column when both lists are labeled wrong, they are on the
wrong sides, and all the arrows are wrong! I get used to it but I can't
expect secretaries and PR personnel who are responsible for site content
to use it backwards.

There are so many other things to consider. The header menu with the
curve image - you can't just change it to rtl. It has to have it's own
desktopportalbanner.axcs. I'm using breadcrumbs in the header and it
doesn't display correctly just by changing the direction, the image has
to change. The desktopfooter and print header and footer have to have
text in a different language, I can't even remember all the little
things.=20

We'd have to manage every image and it would be unweildly.

I will seriously think about your suggestion but my initial response is
that it won't work. Too much has to change and I still believe that
changing layouts and themes on a per language basis is the best
solution.=20

-----Original Message-----
From: jon...@jo... [mailto:jon...@jo...]=20
Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 9:43 AM
To: rai...@li...
Subject: RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL
support

how about...
get rid of the image control from theme.xml...
and have=20
hebrew.css
arabic.css
these have all the rtl and specific images that override the other
values.
I just dont like the idea of managing so many themes.

Anyway... to really be localilzed... site logo should not be in
theme.xml, it should be a param for
each culture.

All the theme images ( module controls etc... can be teh same for every
lanugage, you just want
them on the left instead of right.

----- Original Message -----
From: Marissa McLaughlin
To:  <rai...@li...>
Sent: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 10:06:23 +0200
Subject: RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL
support

I see where you are going. How would this work with our need to change
images for all the different themes? I think we would still need a
different theme.xml for rtl that pointed to the correct images.

Just having rtl will solve the basic problem but it won't allow us to
switch between two rtl languages. We may start displaying in Hebrew and
Arabic - both rtl languages, and we'd need to change the banner image
when we do.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Minond [mailto:jon...@jo...]=20
Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 9:54 AM
To: rai...@li...
Subject: RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL
support

Instead of jumping and making specific themes...
Try making one style sheet...that adds an element to exisiting theme.
Let say rtl_lang.css
Then in page.cs=20
If lang =3D rtl lang
	RegisterCSS("lang_rtl", ....)
End if
If you m ake this the last css file in the page, it will=20
Add=20
Text-align:right
Direction:rtl
To all the elements
span, p, td, etc....

the goal should be a theme that can be used for both, not two themes.
Layout is bigger problem, you can maybe make two layouts...same name add
_rtl to the end
Then if lang=3Drtl lang use rtl layout instead.
=20

-----Original Message-----
From: rai...@li...
[mailto:rai...@li...] On Behalf Of
Omar
Uwaydah/ ZS Saudi SS Engineering
Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 8:48 AM
To: rai...@li...
Subject: RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL
support

Once Marissa releases the code we will work on enhancements.. their
should be a list of languages that are RTL (like arabic, farisi (Iranian
language) , Hebrew , Urdu (an indian language, I don't know if there is
others)..
And I think your solution of new themes and layout is the best.. because
I tried several other solution like changing on the fly the mirroring of
the images and alignement by programming before displaying the page (
but this may effect performance ,,, also I found myself that I need to
change the fonts.. so I dropped that path) and went back to the same
solution u r using of new RTL themes and layout.. but I didn't continue
in the issue of menu..and search

Once u release the code we will suggest enhancement and generalization
to include all RTL languages..

Regards,
Omar

-----Original Message-----
From: rai...@li...
[mailto:rai...@li...] On Behalf Of
Marissa McLaughlin
Sent: Sunday, 03 April, 2005 10:02 AM
To: rai...@li...
Subject: RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL
support

The changes I did hard-coded the switching for Arabic. This really needs
an interface to allow users to select based on language (or page),
whatever ties in best with the changes you are making for future
releases.=20

Description of problem:=20
Our site switches users between a ltr language (English) and a rtl
language (Arabic). This creates problems with themes that have image
borders. If the direction of the page is changed all images are
displayed backwards, corners on borders will curve outward instead of
inward. We also wanted our banner to change if a different language is
selected.

Disclaimer:
Had I known about this list at the time I was fixing this, I would have
come here for suggestions first!

Solution:
For every desktop layout and theme I have, I created another one for the
other language. The names are identical except that the English themes
and desktop layouts append 'Eng' to the name. (I probably should have
done this the other way but Arabic is our default language) For example
I would have 'default' and 'default_Eng'. The correct images and css's
are in each folder and the direction is set in the corresponding files.

Only one file needed to change in the Rainbow core:
Rainbow/app_code/settings/portalsettings.cs

In the part of the code where it selects default themes and desktop
layouts, I added if statements as follows:

if(PortalUILanguage.Name.StartsWith("ar"))
			{
				this.CurrentLayout =3D
CustomSettings["SITESETTINGS_PAGE_LAYOUT"].ToString();
			}
			else
			{
				this.CurrentLayout =3D
CustomSettings["SITESETTINGS_PAGE_LAYOUT"].ToString() + "Eng";
			}

The same is done for themes and alternate themes.

I KNOW this is not the proper way to do it generically. It works for us
and it should be rolled in to the interface somehow to let users select
different desktop layouts and themes for each language.=20

The next problem I had was with the solpart menu (we are using image
menu). The alignment depends on the direction attribute in the body tag.
So far I wasn't writing the attribute to the body tag. To correct this I
made the following change in rainbow/ui/page.cs

After line 926-930:
if ( this.bodyOtherAttributes !=3D string.Empty )
			{
				writer.Write(" ");
				writer.Write(this.BodyOtherAttributes);
			}

I added:
=09
if(portalSettings.PortalUILanguage.Name.StartsWith("ar"))
			{
				writer.Write(" dir=3D'rtl' ");
			}

Finishing with:
			// close the body element start tag
			writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar);
			writer.WriteLine();

As I said, I realize this only works for applications using English and
Arabic and needs to be more generic. We may be adding Hebrew and I will
have to change it again to accommodate that, but I shouldn't have to
edit the code every time I add a language. I didn't have time when I
initially did this to look at putting the options in the UI and storing
more keys in the db, besides I didn't want to make too many custom
changes to Rainbow to avoid massive problems when new Rainbow releases
come out.

I hope this explains what was done. I welcome comments and suggestions.
If we can roll a solution into future Rainbow builds that wouldn't
require the core to be rebuilt, that would be great. If this messes up
what you are working on, let me know and we'll come up with another
solution.=20

If you have any questions, please contact me.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Minond [mailto:jon...@jo...]=20
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 5:27 PM
To: rai...@li...
Subject: RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL
support

How much core changes are involved here? Is it a couple of hit and point
places? Is it changes in themes/and layouts only?
There are two concerns here.....
One.... this cancls out the ability for me to offer the Tab->Page chages
I
made that are only waiting on me finishing the Page Manager (this is an
acceptable loss, I can translate the page manager to suit the current
core
or whatever you did....)
Two.... this could have some effect on 1.6 work that is already underway
or
done by Bill.

-----Original Message-----
From: rai...@li...
[mailto:rai...@li...] On Behalf Of
Marissa McLaughlin
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 2:18 PM
To: rai...@li...; manudea
Subject: RE: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL
support

Hi Omar,

You may have seen my previous message. I have successfully built in the
changes to the core to change desktop layouts and default themes
depending on the selected language but I cannot publish the changes yet
because Rainbow (or esperantus) now forces me to use Saudia Arabic
instead of Jordanian and this will not work for us. We don't use Hijri
dates and when ar-SA Arabic is selected that's how they are translated.
Besides, there is another error, which I think is related, occasionally
when switching from English to Arabic the modules don't display, instead
I get error messages for each one that the date is not in a correct
format and the error message displays the date backwards (yyyy/mm/dd
instead of mm/dd/yyyy). This error comes up always when I update a dll
or make changes to the web.config. It has also come up once or twice
when I didn't make those changes but I haven't narrowed down the cause
yet. We will have to work this out before I can publish the new code and
open it for testing.

I do have a small test team here that will do some amount of testing
before we publish to our site. We've been testing it in house for about
a week and this is all we've found so far. If you have any insight into
the date problems, please let me know. As soon as we have it published
I'll send you the changes, and a link to the working site. I welcome
your offer of testing and providing feedback.

Thanks,

Marissa

-----Original Message-----
From: Omar Uwaydah/ ZS Saudi SS Engineering
[mailto:Oma...@za...]=20
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 1:00 PM
To: manudea
Cc: rainbowportal-devel
Subject: [Rainbowportal-devel] RE: coordination for Rainbow RTL support

Thks manu for your prompt reply
Actually we were having problem in the email ..
I will try to contact back marissa bcse as per her she has done almost
all.. but sure needs testing, debugging and maybe revisions .. Actually
I have done similar work in another way but she is in advance stage than
me...I will try to coordinate with her and build a team for testing,
debugging of her solution and suggesting way of enhancement..

Regards,
Omar

-----Original Message-----
From: manudea [mailto:ma...@du...]

Sent: Saturday, 02 April, 2005 1:40 PM
To: Omar Uwaydah/ ZS Saudi SS Engineering
Subject: R: coordination for Rainbow RTL support

It seems you have some problems with your mail.
Can you recieve this.
I have forwarded digests of mailing list to your address.
I will try to contact Marissa and let you know.
Anyway in an ope source effort usually the team leader is the one that
wnat
to really be a leader.
We have not a hierachy.
If you want to be te coordinator of LTR it is ok for me.
I try to coodrinate people so that no duplicate work is done.
For now I know only you an Marisso on this.
If you browse archives for old messages maybe you can find someone more.
Keep me informed.
MAnu

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