668960 - [RTL] Scratchpad JavaScript editor should be LTR

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(DevTools :: General, defect)

Description

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Since JavaScript Scratchpad is intended for code input, I'd suggest to override its direction for RTL languages, so it would be aligned to the left even when the UI is Arabic, Persian or Hebrew. 


As for l10n, this change would impact few strings, or more exactly the comment in the default empty Scratchpad. For Hebrew I've already included a fix for that so the comment will keep the text direction even if the textarea direction will be changed (using RLE..PDF for each line). 
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-aurora/he/annotate/febdf55b4e80/browser/chrome/browser/scratchpad.dtd#l122
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-aurora/he/annotate/febdf55b4e80/browser/chrome/browser/scratchpad.properties#l35

Comment 1

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Attachment: screenshot

Comment 2

[Rob Campbell [:rc] (:robcee)]

this is not good.

Since this is just a text area, can we force it to run as LTR all the time?

Comment 3

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Since this is just a text area, can we force it to run as LTR all the time?
I am not sure if is actually 'just a text area', as the regular key binding for switching text direction (ctrl-shift-x) is somehow missing from this textarea.

Comment 4

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

(In reply to comment #3)
> switching text direction (ctrl-shift-x) is somehow missing from this
> textarea.
see Bug 669011

Comment 5

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Attachment: Make the textbox left-to-right

Comment 6

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Release drivers don't need to track this but we would be very open to taking a fix. When this patch is reviewed, please request approval on the patch for Beta [6].

Comment 7

[Mihai Sucan [:msucan]]

Comment on attachment 544034 [details] [diff] [review]
Make the textbox left-to-right

This looks fine. Thank you!

I would've expected there is, like dir=ltr|rtl in HTML, an attribute on the xul:textbox element that we can use to change the language direction.

Comment 8

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

(In reply to comment #7)
> I would've expected there is, like dir=ltr|rtl in HTML, an attribute on the
> xul:textbox element that we can use to change the language direction.


XUL has a dir attribute, but it has different semantics. We did discuss possibly adding an attribute equivalent to HTML's dir in bug 548206.

Comment 9

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/4e151ddc06c0

Comment 10

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Comment on attachment 544034 [details] [diff] [review]
Make the textbox left-to-right

Asking approval for aurora and beta. This is a trivial and minimal-risk patch which will make a much better experience for Scratchpad users in RTL locales.

Comment 11

[Rob Campbell [:rc] (:robcee)]

thanks for the quick patch, Simon!

Comment 12

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/735ddcfe8128
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/8375fba12d16

Comment 13

[Alex Lakatos[:AlexLakatos]]

Verified on معرّف البناء: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0 and معرّف البناء: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:7.0a2) Gecko/20110714 Firefox/7.0a2