Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Usability/Prototype/Topic Containers

T305286: Metadata within topic containers gets jumbled when switching between languages

I tried the prototype in English, as I don’t speak Arabic, and it said:

Last comment: 16 March – people in discussion 3 – comments 4

It should have said

4 comments – 3 people in discussion – Last comment: 16 March

or

Last comment: 16 March – 3 people in discussion – 4 comments

instead.

I don’t have a strong opinion on the order of the “chips” (both make sense, since the whole should remain to be right-aligned to match the right-aligned section header), but within the “chips”, the text should not be affected by the directionality of the outside content. It’s actually quite easy to fix: just use three <bdi>s inside the div.ext-discussiontools-init-section-wrapper-metadata instead of three <span>s. (P.S. Why is there Flow on this talk page? The topic containers are about changing the look of wikitext talk pages, and then this talk page isn’t wikitext at all…)

Would you look at it again at https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/7eb90cd880/wiki/Talk:DiscussionTools (set up as a left-to-right wiki)? That might be due to the directionality of the wiki's content language. (The link you originally visited is set up as an Arabic-language wiki from creation.)

Yes, the bug manifests exactly because the directionality of the wiki (right-to-left) and the UI (left-to-right) are different. The same would happen on the English wiki using Hebrew interface. (Arabic interface is not broken, because the Arabic language has its own digits, which have strong directionality as opposed to the Western Arabic digits used in English and Hebrew.)

This should not be this way. First because it’s so easy to fix, second because it’s an absolutely realistic scenario. Maybe there are not many people who use LTR UI on Arabic wikis and want to participate in discussions there (many people who don’t speak Arabic set the interface to a language they understand, but they probably won’t take part in discussions on arwiki); however, many people use Hebrew and other affected UI languages on multilingual wikis like Commons or mediawiki.org. (Multilingual wikis’ content language is English.)

@Tacsipacsi can you please read the "Issue" below and share what – if any – adjustments you think need to be made to it before I file a ticket?

Issue

1. Visit a wiki that has been configured to support LTR languages*

2. Navigate to a talk page where Topic Containers are enabled

3. Change the "Display language" to a RTL language

4. Notice the interface elements that used to appear on the left side of the screen now appear on the right (e.g. the site's search field)

Actual

5. ❗️ Notice the numerals that appear within the Topic Container appear after the text labels rather before them (read: "comments 4")

Expected

5. ✅ Notice the numerals that appear within the Topic Container appear before the text labels rather before them (read: "4 comments")

*This also happens if you visit a wiki configured to support RTL languages and change the "Display language" from an RTL to an LTR language.

(P.S. Why is there Flow on this talk page? The topic containers are about changing the look of wikitext talk pages, and then this talk page isn’t wikitext at all…)

There isn't a particularly strong reason for using Flow on this page; it's more so a consequence of not including the step to make it so as part of the process of starting the central notice campaign T302120.

Although, in writing the above, it did lead me to think, "Something I do appreciate about using Flow, particularly on pages where we anticipate receiving feedback, is having the ability to summarize the feedback someone shares by adding links to the tickets we've filed to the topic's 'Summary' section."

The thought above led me to file: T305220.

3. Change the "Display language" to a RTL language that uses Western Arabic numerals (e.g. Hebrew)

[…]

*This also happens if you visit a wiki configured to support RTL languages and change the "Display language" from an RTL language to an LTR language using Western Arabic numerals.

Although it will not manifest itself if the translation puts text before the text (e.g. if the English translation was There are $1 comments instead of $1 comments, it would display correctly), so I’d recommend either testing it with the setup I noticed it with (Arabic site language, English UI language), or using made-up Hebrew translations on a local install that don’t certainly don’t include any text before the number. Otherwise it looks good, thanks!

Excellent – thank you for reviewing, @Tacsipacsi. Ticket filed: T305286.