4 ms·

I wonder why this issue isn't raised more often if it's the reality for millions of users of RTL-written languages. Or do most of them switch the language of we

I wonder why this issue isn't raised more often if it's the reality for millions of users of RTL-written languages. Or do most of them switch the language of web apps to English anyway? (I do - not because of bugs, but because of missing features)

dan-robertson 7y ago
I expect they mostly use websites for their language rather than international ones.
kroltan 7y ago
As an user of a language with diacritics back in the 2000s, I certainly switched to English whenever I saw broken encodings. I can only imagine the incentive must be greater if a site is actively broken or unusable.
jlg23 6y ago
At least here in Morocco a lot of people make up transliterations into the Latin alphabet on the spot and those are read RTL.
ajconway 6y ago
All major application platforms have decent support for RTL, but more often than not it's up to a developer to use the built-in tools (or develop new ones if they had chosen to use a non-standard UI implementation). It might seem that supporting RTL is as easy as flipping a switch and calling it a day, but it's really not. Developers have to invest resources into supporting foreign (from their point of view) layouts. Interestingly, the issue seems to be similar to that of missing accessibility features. I believe the reason here is the same — if you don't expect many users who would make use of the feature, it gets overlooked.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
Power structures! At least in my country, most (good) developers are more comfortable in English, because English is the way to economic success (thanks colonialism). These people are not really interested in doing the hard work necessary to fix the many RTL bugs present in various programs. For my language, Urdu, the web is far more broken than for Arabic. RTL fonts used on most major websites are adequate for Arabic, but not for Urdu, because the Urdu script contains additonal characters that Arabic script does not have. Moreover, Arabic fonts are in the Naksh calligraphic style, while Urdu speakers are more comfortable with the Nastaliq calligraphic style. I personally use Greasemonkey to force Nastaliq fonts for RTL content on various major websites.

dan-robertson 7y ago

I expect they mostly use websites for their language rather than international ones.

kroltan 7y ago

As an user of a language with diacritics back in the 2000s, I certainly switched to English whenever I saw broken encodings. I can only imagine the incentive must be greater if a site is actively broken or unusable.

jlg23 6y ago

At least here in Morocco a lot of people make up transliterations into the Latin alphabet on the spot and those are read RTL.

ajconway 6y ago

All major application platforms have decent support for RTL, but more often than not it's up to a developer to use the built-in tools (or develop new ones if they had chosen to use a non-standard UI implementation). It might seem that supporting RTL is as easy as flipping a switch and calling it a day, but it's really not. Developers have to invest resources into supporting foreign (from their point of view) layouts. Interestingly, the issue seems to be similar to that of missing accessibility features. I believe the reason here is the same — if you don't expect many users who would make use of the feature, it gets overlooked.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

Power structures! At least in my country, most (good) developers are more comfortable in English, because English is the way to economic success (thanks colonialism). These people are not really interested in doing the hard work necessary to fix the many RTL bugs present in various programs. For my language, Urdu, the web is far more broken than for Arabic. RTL fonts used on most major websites are adequate for Arabic, but not for Urdu, because the Urdu script contains additonal characters that Arabic script does not have. Moreover, Arabic fonts are in the Naksh calligraphic style, while Urdu speakers are more comfortable with the Nastaliq calligraphic style. I personally use Greasemonkey to force Nastaliq fonts for RTL content on various major websites.