International Accessibility: Language settings & RTL text

[jaw-sh]

There are a few big issues for International users at the moment.

1. Board config inadequately addresses language.
2. Board list uses flags to represent languages.
3. Arabic and other Right-to-Left languages are hard to read.

As a part of this ticket I will be introducing the following fixes.

1. Board config will have a checklist for languages. I'll add in the top 20 most spoken languages (and probably all European languages, so we can have Polish) to start us off.
2. Board list will allow filtering languages. (Part of Board List Rewrite #456)
3. Posts will be parsed differently.

For number 3, if we have a post like this:

The board owner can technically just put custom CSS into the board to fix, but I agree that 8chan should have a board-level option for enabling a rtl post mode. It would look like this.

مِصْرَ أو رسمياً جُمهورِيةُ مِصرَ العَرَبيةِ، دولة عربية تقع في الركن الشمالي الشرقي من قارة أفريقيا، ولديها امتداد آسيوي، حيث تقع شبه جزيرة سيناء داخل قارة آسيا فهي دولة عابرة للقارات. ويحد جمهورية مصر العربية من الشمال البحر المتوسط بساحل يبلغ طوله 995 كم، ويحدها شرقا البحر الأحمر بساحل يبلغ طوله 1941 كم، ويحدها في الشمال الشرقي منطقة فلسطين (إسرائيل وقطاع غزة) بطول 265 كم، ويحدها من الغرب ليبيا على امتداد خط بطول 1115 كم، كما يحدها جنوبا السودان بطول 1280 كم. تبلغ مساحة جمهورية مصر العربية حوالي 1.002.000 كيلومتر مربع [3] والمساحة المأهولة تبلغ 78990كم2 بنسبة 7.8 % من المساحة الكلية.[4] وتُقسم مصر إدارياً إلى 27 محافظة، وتنقسم كل محافظة إلى تقسيمات إدارية أصغر وهي المراكز أو الأقسام.[5]

The first paragraph will be wrapped in a tag like this:
<p class="ltr"></p>

The second paragraph will be wrapped in a tag like this:
<p class="rtl"></p>

This will allow English and Arabic text to exist in the same post and still be rendered RTL or LTR correctly.

StackOverflow has offered a solution for detecting arabic text. We can extend this to other RTL languages in the future.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3541371/php-how-do-i-detect-if-an-input-string-is-arabic

[jaw-sh]

1. Post lines are now converted into <p>aragraphs instead of being split up by <br> tags
2. Added a RTL language detector.

[marlencrabapple]

Will this work well with block spoilers or any other block formatting? Might wanna check that out if you already haven't.

[jaw-sh]

@marlencrabapple it does as well as the current setup does. I've compared them and it seems okay.

[jaw-sh]

Issues with commit 320616:

• People are saying the margins and padding are off for them.
• OPs in Arabic float way off to the right.
• Post numbers preceding a 100% arabic text are left-aligned. Can probably fix this by checking to see if 90% of a post is Arabic and then right-aligning purely symbolic lines.

[ctrlcctrlv]

It broke quoting as well in certain cases.

[justpassingbynow]

There seems to be an issue with Exodus (the android application) after the recent changes. The app doesn't recognize the line breaks, making all the posts appear as if they're one line. I guess this is because of the change from <br to <p. Can that be fixed? I think the developer has been inactive for a while so we hope it can be fixed through the site itself, as the app is very important to many of us.
A screenshot from one of the users at /egy/: https://media.8ch.net/egy/src/1429461425527.jpg
Thanks in advance.

[jaw-sh]

@justpassingbynow can you please link me to your extension's page so I can install it?

[ctrlcctrlv]

@wingy needs to fix that, he develops Exodus. It's third party and has nothing to do with us

[ctrlcctrlv]

I think we fixed all the problems with this, and someone opened a PR on @wingy Exodus. So either rebuild Exodus or use the APK someone built already (I have no idea if it contains a virus, just found it on /operate/): http://nreboot.com/chan/app-release.apk