Overriding text flow direction from rtl to ltr in milo

[aishwaryamathuria]

Problem statement:

When EN content is used in an RTL locale page, there are instances when the locale of the page is en and content in that locale page needs to be aligned from left to right.
On AEM we can set the locale property of the page at the page or folder level and override the default rtl alignment

Proposed Solution:

We set a metadata property on the page or folder level, for instance 'content-locale' to locale that the page should use.
If the value of the content locale metatag is set on the page we set the document.dir to the textinfo direction of that locale's ietf value in place of the default text info direction of current locale.

@chrischrischris @auniverseaway @vhargrave @overmyheadandbody @amitbikram @salonijain3 @honstar
Could you please provide your inputs on the same and confirm if we can go forward with this approach?

[salonijain3]

@dstrong23 https://jira.corp.adobe.com/browse/MWPW-125482

[TsayAdobe]

FYI, Firefox doesn't support textinfo. Whatever solution you have, please check its behavior on Firefox.

[aishwaryamathuria]

@TsayAdobe
Currently Milo is using textinfo for setting the document.dir currently in milo with live scripts, the alignment is not changing to rtl on firefox.
For Chrome and Safari this change is working as expected with the suggested code changes.

[auniverseaway]

Can we get some sample URLs?

[dstrong23]

Pulled sample urls from ticket https://jira.corp.adobe.com/browse/MWPW-125482. See below:

here's a sample of what a page looks like in MENA/AR:

https://main--bacom--adobecom.hlx.page/mena_ar/customer-success-stories/dixons-carphone-case-study

Ideally, this would still look like the US/EN page:

https://business.adobe.com/customer-success-stories/dixons-carphone-case-study

[auniverseaway]

If the value of the content locale metatag is set on the page we set the document.dir to the textinfo direction of that locale's ietf value in place of the default text info direction of current locale.

This sounds backwards to me, but maybe I am missing something?

"If the value of the content locale metatag is set on the page we set the document.dir to the textinfo direction"

Wouldn't it be, "if the value of the content locale metatag is set on the page, we use this instead of textinfo.direction coming from the locale ietf." ?

[aishwaryamathuria]

@auniverseaway We do have text direction information available for the locale of the page and we are setting the the document.dir to that textinfo.direction. For instance if you take a page with rtl alignment (mena_ar) it's locale is 'ar' and the page text direction is set to rtl by default.
The problem is that there are a few pages in mena_ar locale that have only english content. Authors want to be able to mark the locale of this page to 'en' so that the page can be available under mena_ar but the alignment remains from left to right and not right to left. So in that case we are proposing that we will set the text direction based on the locale specified in the meta tag (which here in the example is 'en') and not the default locale (which here in this example is 'ar')

[auniverseaway]

Given @TsayAdobe's comments about firefox, I would almost go back to my original suggestion which is to have dir: rtl in the locale of the locale list. The locales that need it, have it. The ones that don't don't.

[aishwaryamathuria]

We can specify the dir as rtl for rtl locales in the config locale list but if we have a page under those locales which needs dir to not be rtl (like en page under mena_ar) we need a way to override the default dir that Milo adds and in that case we can set the dir from config list for metatag locale and not the page's locale.

[aishwaryamathuria]

@auniverseaway @TsayAdobe Could you please share your inputs on the above?

1. We can do a fix for the current dir issue in firefox by providing option to add dir in config.locales
2. We can provide an override option for default dir (in config.locales) via 'content-locale' metadata tag

CC: @salonijain3 @amitbikram @dstrong23

[chrischrischris]

1. Agree that text dir should go into the locale config
2. Override seems logical to me. Do we want authors to enter locale_lang or just lang?

[aishwaryamathuria]

Hi @chrischrischris @auniverseaway @salonijain3 @dstrong23
As per the discussion in the last meeting we will implement the following changes for this change:

1. Pick the dir from config.locales (if set)
2. If dir is not defined in config.locales for that particular locale we pick it from Intl
3. Give an override option via metatag for dir option only.