154625 - (bidi_relnotes) BiDi (Arabic/Hebrew/etc.) release notes tracker bug

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Tracking, defect)

Description

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

It would be useful to have some Bidi release notes where we could summarize the
status of Bidi support for different releases and platforms and update
outstanding issues. Let's track it here.

Comment 1

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Shosh, would you like to be QA on this?

Comment 2

[Shoshannah Forbes]

taking QA

Comment 3

[Roland Mainz]

- Bug 78201 ("[BiDi]:Arabic 2 byte fonts don't seem to render"):
Arabic does may not work with iso8859-6 fonts on X11 (Unix/Linux) platforms
Workaround:
Use iso10646-1 fonts (like those from
http://crl.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/download.html)

Comment 4

[Roland Mainz]

Shoshannah Forbes:
Wanna suggest possible wording for release notes for the dependencies that you
have added, please ?

Comment 5

[Shoshannah Forbes]

* Selection of multiple lines in pages with Hebrew/Arabic encodings is broken
(bug 82352).  
Workarounds:
1) If your default encoding is Hebrew/Arabic, and the page has no Hebrew/Arabic
characters, change the encoding to western from the view menu
2) Click at the beginging of the text, and CTRL+Click at the end. Everything in
the middle will be selected.

Comment 6

[Shoshannah Forbes]

There is no UI for controlling directionality of composed messages (bug 96057
and bug 119857)
Workaround:
A partial XUL workaround can be downloaded from here:
http://www.typo.co.il/~mooffie/mozilla/hebmailpack.html

Comment 7

[Shoshannah Forbes]

correction for comment #5: should be Shift+Click instead of ctrl+click

Comment 8

[Shoshannah Forbes]

Problems setting Hebrew fonts under Mac OS X (bug 110655 and bug 153296)-
Mozilla ignores the Hebrew font set in the users preferences, and uses a
seemingly random font.
Workarounds:
∑ On OS 10.1.x- rename the desired font to be the first font in the alphabetical
list (does not work wit 10.2)
∑ Use tinker tool to change the system font to the Hebrew font that you want

Comment 9

[Shoshannah Forbes]

Mac OS X: Crash on startup if the volume Mozilla is on has a directionality mark
in it’s name (bug 127683).
This will happen especially if you boot periodically into Mac OS 9.x from Yeda.
Workaround:
Use the get info command in OS X to rename the volume. This operation has to be
repeated after every boot into OS 9.x from yeda.

Comment 10

[Shoshannah Forbes]

Mozilla has numerous problems with didactic placement. (bugs 123218 81367
 144157 60546).

Comment 11

[Shoshannah Forbes]

with didactic placement= with diacritic placement.
I hate my spell checker...

Comment 12

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

No bidi change for text boxes (both <textarea> and <input>), like control-shift
at windows. bug 98160

Workaround: 
here [http://archive.takilla.com/SiteBuilders/msg01342.html] explained how to
bind the F12 key to the direction change. It's Hebrew, but can be readable even
for non Hebrew speakers, I guess.

Comment 13

[Roland Mainz]

bug 78201:
Arabic support on Unix/Linux:
Starting with Mozilla 1.2beta support for iso8859-6.8x encoded fonts was added
on Unix/Linux (previously arabic display and printing was only supported via
iso10646-1 fonts).
Printing arabic is supported via the Xprint module.
iso8859-6.8-encoded fonts are available from
http://www.langbox.com/AraZilla/linux/arafontfull-1.2-4.i386.rpm

Comment 14

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

As I can see, there are still problems with RTL and <DIV>s, and there seems to
be no progress.

bug 131023 and bug 153516 both seems to talk about the same. Hebrew text "flies"
to the far side of the screen, on any Hebrew page that looks good in other
browsers. Yet I see no CSS tricks to reslove this temporary. 

bug 140611 talks about a case where the list (<LI>) bullet goes to the wrong
side, instead of mirroring of the LTR case ("* item" -> "item *").

Those bugs are ugly, and make people hate <table>-free page construction, while
in other browsers it's work just fine. We cant call Microsoft for standards,
while Mozilla still has basic rendering problems for Hebrew/Arabic pages.

Comment 15

[Prognathous]

The Target Milestone field needs updating.

Prog.

Comment 16

[Shoshannah Forbes]

bug #188294 affects all gecko browsers on MacOS, preventing proper editing of
Hebrew text in web mail, message boards, wikis, web logs etc.
It also affects composer and mail/news.

Really really annoying bug, with the only workaround being writing the text in
an external editor and pasting back to the editing area.

Comment 17

[Shoshannah Forbes]

Re comment #14:
Bug #6976 is probably also related, and it has not been fixed yet (althugh it is
4 years old and has more then 15 dups).

Comment 18

[BMO Automation]

Marking all tracking bugs which haven't been updated since 2014 as INCOMPLETE.
If this bug is still relevant, please reopen it and move it into a bugzilla component related to the work
being tracked. The Core: Tracking component will no longer be used.