Closed Bug 139337 Opened 22 years ago Closed 17 years ago

RFE: page layout shouldn't be hard-coded left-to-right

Categories

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Printing: Output
Platform:
x86
Windows 2000
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: smontagu, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Keywords: helpwanted) 

The current page setup dialog assumes a left-to-right page layout. It should be
reversible, based on page direction <html dir="rtl"> and/or default direction in
preferences.
Blocks: 137995
reassigning to UI
Assignee: rods → law
Blocks: 180628
Blocks: 125824
spec please?
Assignee: law → printing
Keywords: helpwanted
(In reply to comment #2)
> spec please?

The backend spec is quite simple, summed up in the following pseudo-code:

if (document.dir=="rtl") {
  SwapLeftAndRightMargins();
  SwapLeftAndRightHeaders();
  SwapLeftAndRightFooters();
}

I'm less sure about how this change should affect the page setup dialog. At the
moment, the appearance of the page in the dialog reflects the interface
direction, which doesn't necessarily reflect the direction of the page being
printed (see bug 180628).

The politically correct approach would probably be to change the texts in the
dialog from "top", "bottom", "left" and "right" to "before", "after", "start"
and "end", but I doubt if that would make sense to the average user with no
bidirectional expectations.

Another alternative is just to leave the page setup dialog unchanged, and assume
that users who are printing bidirectional documents naturally expect the margin,
headers and footers to flip with the document direction. Localizers to
right-to-left languages would have the choice of translating "left" as "right"
and vice versa, or using something more like "start" and "end" in their language.

A third possibility is to add buttons to the dialog for "Left-to-right document"
and "Right-to-left document" which would flip the direction of the appropriate
dialog elements. I suspect that that would be considered "cluttering the UI" ;-)
as i see it, the position of the headers and footers, and the left and right
margin set in the page setup dialog, should be independent of the direction of
the page being printed. if the user has set the left margin to be x, i assume he
expect the left margin to be x, regardless of the content of the page. and
that's how it is now, except for the problem in bug 180628. only thing is that
the headers and footers are not inheriting the direction of the UI, which causes
problems, expecially in the "page # of #" header.
It looks like this bug is an INVALID basied on Tsahi's last comment. Simon, do you agree?
I agree with Tsahi's comment #4. Marking WONTFIX.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 17 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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