Dear Ubuntu Developers, This is a call for help in making Ubuntu usable in RTL locales.
Preface: Complete mirroring of the GUI is essential for users of RTL languages. GTK and Qt have this RTL alignment since ancient times, allowing RTL users to enjoy localized interaces. Unity, the main GUI in Ubuntu, doesn't support RTL alignment(1). This is a broken experience for RTL users. Unity and it's toolkit, Nux, is in process of merging patches which provide RTL support. Not soon enough for Precise. Unity 2D already has RTL support. So, in order to work around the lack of RTL support in Unity and make Ubuntu usable in RTL locales out of the box, users of RTL locales should be made to fall back to Unity 2D in Precise. If you want to work on this, please see the list of 6 points about this patch in the Ubuntu RTL mailing list(2). He who supplies this "fallback patch" in time for Precise (freeze exception possible) will actually fix Ubuntu for RTL speakers in the world: Arabic: 300 Million Persian: 110 Million Urdu: 60 Million Pashto: 50 Million Kurdish: 16 Million Sindhi: 21 Million Hebrew: 8 Million Total is 565 Million people so this would be very good Karma! ;-) (stats from Wikipedia) Thanks and Blessings, Shahar Links: 1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/654988 2. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-rtl/2012-February/000035.html -- ubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
