Problem with RTL and BIDI text

[arf1372]

If someone who uses RTL scripts (like arabic, persian or hebrew) wants to write notes in her/his mother language, the UI forces LTR direction which is not correct and the text renders somehow messy. Now, if s/he wants to add some english phrases or keywords to her/his notes things goes worse. The LTR direction makes text's flow totally broken.
As far as I know, fix for this could be done by adding a special dir="auto" attribute to some block and inline html elements (like <div>, <p> and <span>) and the browser itself detects the correct direction based on a standard unicode algorithm. But, unfortunately I'm not a front-end developer nor having any clojure understanding. :(

[cnrpman]

Need help from people with related experience 🤣
Clojure knowledge is not really required. Basically it's translating logic to HTML

---

Now there's a RTL plugin
https://github.com/sawhney17/logseq-rtl-mode-plugin
Any feedback on this?

[arf1372]

Need help from people with related experience 🤣 Clojure knowledge is not really required. Basically it's translating logic to HTML

So, can you help me/walk me through fixing this issue? If I can find a consistent way to add the special dir="auto" attribute, both RTL scripts and BIDI texts (which are two different but related things) can be fixed simultaneously.

Although, there may be a need for RTL UI too but it's different topic. For now, I just want to have a good look and feel of LogSeq when I use my language. 😉

[cnrpman]

@arf1372 Sure!
It sounds to me that you have already tried manually adding dir="auto" using dev tools and it works. I can point you to the related line in code-base.
For example, if I add the attribute :dir "rtl" in
https://github.com/logseq/logseq/blob/master/src/main/frontend/components/block.cljs#L1871-L1877

what it equals:

the editor would look like this:

But the bullets look awful in this case..

I can point you further if you have idea about where to add in DOM (with dev tools)

[chromer030]

Please add support for RTL languages.

[cnrpman]

@arf1372 @chromer030 There's a plugin for RTL. Have you checked it?
https://github.com/sawhney17/logseq-rtl-mode-plugin

[Hashemian01]

@arf1372 @chromer030 There's a plugin for RTL. Have you checked it? https://github.com/sawhney17/logseq-rtl-mode-plugin

I tried the plugin. It's a good start. However, as the OP stated, people who write in RTL languages usually need a bidi environment as they need to write in both directions (like when you need to quote someone in english, codeblocks, math blocks, etc). Each paragraph needs to have it's own direction and I'm not sure if this can be solved by a plugin.

[cnrpman]

@arf1372 @chromer030 There's a plugin for RTL. Have you checked it? https://github.com/sawhney17/logseq-rtl-mode-plugin

I tried the plugin. It's a good start. However, as the OP stated, people who write in RTL languages usually need a bidi environment as they need to write in both directions (like when you need to quote someone in english, codeblocks, math blocks, etc). Each paragraph needs to have it's own direction and I'm not sure if this can be solved by a plugin.

Sounds possible by defining a RTL block property.
cc. @sawhney17

Kudo to the great RTL plugin :)

[sawhney17]

There's an older plugin on my GitHub page called Auto RTL which may be what you're after. You cAn install it as an unpacked plugin as it's not on the marketplace.

[giladwo]

Hi all :)

I've been using hkgnp/logseq-rtlblocks-plugin for a few days now and it's quite good.

I'd really like to upstream this into logseq (seems like a better option than inefficiently querying all elements all the time and obviates the need to add a common custom.js to all graphs).

What are your thoughts on this?

[ahangarha]

I want to raise the main issue again. As discussed by @arf1372 earlier, the right solution for this issue is to have bidirectional text support. Regardless of the app's overall direction, any text block should be appropriately rendered based on its content. In the bidirectional text, it means to put the direction of that block of text based on the direction associated with the first strong character of that block.

This is achievable mainly by adding dir="auto" and using logical values in CSS.
There are known issues in lists (still manageable).