new Ubuntu 10.04 themes don't properly support RTL languages

[Uri Shabtay]

Binary package hint: light-themes

Like in most Ubuntu themes, a centred title look professional, and accurate when using RTL languages

here's an example to illustrate my point:
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/2158/screenshot3l.png

Therefore, i offer centring the title in the windows border. It'll give the theme a slick, professional look, relevant to all languages -- left or right oriented

cheers

[Ddorda (ddorda)]

I agree.
another way is to make it be in the right on RTL languages.

[akiva (akiva3)]

I agree.
i think that middle is great.

[Chris Johnston (cjohnston)]

The design of the new theme is to have the title on the left. Marking invalid.

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

Hi,

I understand that the design of the theme is to align to the left, but please consider that for an application with a Hebrew title, for example, aligning the title to the left looks to the user as if you were aligning an English title to the right, which I suppose would be contrary to the designer's idea.

[Uri Shabtay (uri.shabtay)]

obviously it's your call Chris, yet i want to emphasise i filed this bug not out of some caprice to left aligned titles (we all know Dust), but simply due to the fact that it's going to be the Official Theme for an upcoming LTS version. nevertheless should we consider all the hard work that was done to make this theme look as good as it does.

thanks again

[Shlomil (shlomister)]

The decision to allign the title was made considering varuois usability issues and the set of mind Ubuntu design people had so I think we\ll have to conform and just check that it works OK in RTL layout.

From watching your screenshot (I didn't test it yet by myself) I think the real bug here is that the new Ubuntu theme doesn't respect RTL and doesn't completly mirror the original LTR layout like other themes do.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Like Shlomil said, the new themes should be mirrored for RTL languages.

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

Hi,

I've looked inside the theme, and as far as I can see this change requires help from metacity. This is why I've added metacity project to this bug.

[Uri Shabtay (uri.shabtay)]

IMHO, i think we can all save the trouble of configuring the theme to RTL and making the text display on the right end side when using RTL locale, and simply center it. i don't understand why we're bothering ourselves with this..

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

@IsraeliHawk: I think that there are many themes that are designed with left aligned titles, and it would be best if metacity would support flipping them automatically to the right when using an RTL locale.

Of course, centering the title would be a reasonable solution, but it would compromise the designer's choice on the alignment, and as Shlomil wrote, this was done with a lot of careful consideration.

[Vish (vish)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream.
Once submitted upstream , do report back here with the upstream bug number.
Thanks in advance!

[Uri Shabtay (uri.shabtay)]

at first, i thought the bug is a duplicate of Bug #532633 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/532633), since Marián Bača (https://launchpad.net/~majoobaca), the reporter, describes the issue in his first sentence..

yet again, it isn't the main issue, so i reverted the idea

[Liel Fridman (lielft-deactivatedaccount)]

Well, I'm attaching a path. This path creates RTL (Reversed) themes, where there are reversed buttons.

[Liel Fridman (lielft-deactivatedaccount)]

Sorry, I made a mistake. Here is the correct patch.

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

Hi,

I tried looking at the patch. The only difference in the text files is the name of the themes, so I expect the difference to be in the png files. Unfortunately they are not included in the patch.

Generally, I think that the solution shouldn't require an RTL user choosing a different theme other than the default. I would expect the system to support RTL right out of the box.

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

Hi again,

I've sent a patch to metacity upstream that was meant to deal with this issue, by flipping the title alignment in metacity for themes that align to the left.

If you want to try it, you can now also try it from my ppa on launchpad. See ppa:haggai-eran/ppa .

Regards,
Haggai

[Uri Shabtay (uri.shabtay)]

folks please,

I'm not using a RTL locale in my laptop. i like the English the way it is, along the Hebrew and Arabic support. why can't we upload upstream the original request..? with all due respect to the bug, this is too simple to solve, not to mention we don't need all of these repetitions

[Shlomil (shlomister)]

Wasn't this bug fixed a long time ago. Are we dealing here with a regression in Metacity?

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92212

Maybr you guys should contact Yair Hershkovitz (author of previous fixes) before you try to patch it and ask for his opinion...

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

@Shlomil: I don't believe this is a regression. Bug #92212 refers to the order of the window decoration buttons. As far as I can see, the attached patch there only deals with that issue. In any case, I've contacted Yair Hershkovitz, and waiting for his reply.

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

@Uri Shabtay: Perhaps I was wrong to follow this issue here, since this bug really asks for the simple solution you mention: just center the title for all languages. However, there is also the real issue of left-aligned themes in metacity. If we need a new bug report for that I can try and open it.

[Uri Shabtay (uri.shabtay)]

i doubt neither will do anything better. since this bug in the first place has been addressed as 'invalid', nothing, IMHO will change. all i hope is that the RTL issue will be resolved, due to the fact my Mom will find it simpler to handle when she'll upgrade to 10.04

[Shlomil (shlomister)]

Haggai, can you please provide a like to the patch/bug report that you sent upstream?

[Haggai Eran (haggai-eran)]

The upstream metacity bug is already linked to this bug. Here it is anyway:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=612940

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

I'm attaching the "patch-forwarded-upstream" tag to indicate that the patch was already forwarded upstream, as mentioned a few comments up.

[Shlomil (shlomister)]

I found this related post in my RSS reader:
http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2010/05/14/justified-and-ancient/

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This bug report is quite confused. I am marking it Invalid for three reasons. First, it covers multiple issues which would almost certainly be fixed separately. Second, it assumes a particular solution (centering window titles in Metacity) which has already caused it to be marked Invalid once, and which is now obsolete (Ubuntu now uses Compiz by default). And third, the main issue described is a duplicate of bug 533200.

Please report individual RTL bugs separately -- see bug 842906 for an example. Thanks.