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mathematical.coffee
Asked: 2013-05-23 22:38:25 +0800 CST

Set text direction in gnome-shell?

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How can I change the text direction in gnome-shell back and forth between right-to-left and left-to-right?

(Mine is in left-to-right. I have tried changing the language to Chinese (using the "Region and Language" settings widget) which I believe does right-to-left. Upon logging out and back in, the shell still appeared left to right. Do I need to do something else like set a keyboard layout to cause RTL ??).

gnome

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Gnome as all GTK application, its RTL switch comes from locale definition and it's tight coded. So you have to change to RTL locale/language. If that locale is not installed GUI will be flipped but text/labels/menu will fall-back to the original language (English in most cases) with warning message:

    Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
    Using the fallback 'C' locale.

    As I know Chinese is direction independent, I suppose it is configured as LTR. So it is better to look pure RTL locales like Arabic, Hebrew, Persian ...

    To change setting for Unity or Gnome Sessions/Desktop

    • To change global settings /etc/default/locale, Example (ar_DZ, Arabic_Algeria):

      LANGUAGE=ar
LANG=ar_DZ.UTF-8

      Need to logout

    • To change only user setting ~/.pam_environment

      LANGUAGE=ar
LANG=ar_DZ.UTF-8

      Need to logout

    Another way, If you want to flip GUI or switch locale/language for just one application:

    • Open terminal Ctrl+Alt+t

    • Run it with LANG=ar_DZ.UTF-8 or LANGUAGE=ar_DZ.UTF-8, try both of them not all application use same env variable:

      LANGUAGE=ar_DZ.UTF-8 evince
LANG=ar_DZ.UTF-8 okular

    Qt applications have a separated RTL switch -reverse which could be used without language change. Example: 

    qv4l2 -reverse

    Now, If your language is not English and you want to use RTL flipped interface with it. There is a trick, you may test it:

    • Generate new locale as variation of an RTL language, example:

      sudo locale-gen ar_YY.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

    • Copy your language translation (of gettext) files to new locale folder. As example French.

      sudo cp -r /usr/local/share/locale/fr /usr/local/share/locale/ar_YY

    • Not all application put their locales in /usr/local/share/locale/. If you face such case, you may look where all locale files:

      locate /locale/fr

    References:

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