On Fri, 14 Apr 2006 11:53:17 -0400 William Allen Simpson william.allen.simpson@gmail.com wrote:
Reinhardt WIEWE @ torg.is wrote:
In fact, I just tested it by adding:
FORM#editform TEXTAREA#wpTextbox1 { unicode-bidi: bidi-override; }
to my monobook.css on yi.wiktionary and it seems to work. Gangleri, can you try this and say if it helps any?
-- Ilmari Karonen
Thanks Ilmari for the suggestion.
It wasn't a suggestion, it was a question. Please say whether it helps?
I would not use 'bidi-override' for my personal work. Remember it is a matter of preferences and available options. I made aprox. 10,000 RTL edits in the normal textarea box and get used to it. The main question is if it would help *other* contributors. This depends on the available options and some might like 'bidi-override'.
If people are using a RTL browser, a RTL OS (or a RTL keyboard) if they have an RTL editor of their choice they would have completly different preferences. Please remember that MediaWiki supports the usage of an external editor via special:Preferences > Editing > Use external editor by default . I neither have used an external editor for LTR edits nor have I investigated about experiences with an external editor with good RTL / BiDi support. I will let you know as soon as I get additional informations.
Niklas and Rob suggested
http://yi.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=user:Nikerabbit/monobook.css&...
form#editform textarea#wpTextbox1 { direction: ltr } form#editform input#wpSummary { direction: ltr }
But that just makes everything ltr. Not what was under discussion here.
"Making everithing ltr" is the default setting for http://ar.wikipedia.org/ and http://he.wikipedia.org/ for logged in users. Anonymuous users would still have an RTL textarea. I mentioned this in a previous post. It is an option; my opinion about this: as more option you have the more flexible the system will be.
This is just a part of the interface. It does not cover search, move,
delete,
undelete, block etc. fields
Editing RTL in MediaWiki is a mather of practice. As requested in
Allow users to change text direction in all text input and textarea boxes http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4011
the change from LTR to RTL editing and viceversa should be as easy as
possible.
I would realy be happy to have a choice in 'special:Preferences'.
Anonymous editors would not have this posibility. If they accept cookies
one
could offer two radio buttons for a 'LTR' or 'RTL' choice.
But not possible to be addressed until folks know the technical solution. Stay focused. Does bidi-override help with template edits?
The fair answer is: It is the *last choice*. If I need to debug a template or page I copy the content and past it to http://pastebin.com/ . This is equivalent to 'bidi-override' when direction is 'ltr'. pastebin.com offers the additional advantage that I am able to identify (unwanted) general punctuation characters which have found their way into the code by eroneous copy and paste. Why 'bidi-override' when direction is 'rtl' should not be a good solution for someone comming from / native in the RTL world?
Please note that RTL and mainly BiDi source code *editing* is very complex, that the bidirectional algorithm works on / resets on entities as paragraphs, table cells etc. And please do not forget that the nesting levels are limited.
What the textarea box editing is is mainly writing an email in Outlook / Outlook express in *source code*. Nobody would do that. And things are changing slowly so it is very important to know the texarea editing capabilities of the browsers (and Firefox is a very common browser).
As more lines you have in the textarea as less bidirectional "mess" you get. You would still need to get used to the bidirectional algorithm but the effects are limited to *one* line only. This is where the suggestion of splitting the template (and page) code over many lines comes from.
reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]