Fix reading view direction for right-to-left articles - #909
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The reader kept the default LTR direction for RTL articles (Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, and others) that declare a language but no explicit dir, and the standalone reader page and in-reader navigation never carried the source direction at all. Thread the article language (from Defuddle) through ReaderContent and resolve direction in one shared helper, applyReaderDirection, used by the live page, the standalone reader page, and in-reader navigation: honor an explicit source dir, else derive rtl from the language via the existing isRTLLanguage helper, else clear it. No CSS changes. Add tests for isRTLLanguage and applyReaderDirection. Closes obsidianmd#864
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Summary
The reading view stayed left-aligned for right-to-left articles (Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, and others), which makes them hard to read. This derives the reader's text direction from the article so RTL pages mirror correctly. Closes #864.
Root cause
Reader.apply()only re-applied adirthat the source<html>already carried. Many RTL pages declarelangbut omit an explicitdir, so the reader kept the default LTR direction. The standalonereader.htmland in-reader navigation paths never carried the source direction at all, since there<html>belongs toreader.html(lang="en"), not to the article.Changes
Defuddle already reports the article language (
result.language). This threads it throughReaderContentand centralizes direction in one helper,applyReaderDirection, shared by all three reader paths (live page, standalone reader page, in-reader navigation). Resolution order: honor an explicit sourcedirif present, otherwise derivertlfrom the language via the existingisRTLLanguage()helper, otherwise clear any stale direction.Design notes
dir="auto".autoinfers base direction from the first strong character, so an Arabic paragraph starting with a Latin word (for example "Google هي شركة ...") would flip to LTR. Deriving from the language avoids that. Inline mixed runs are still handled by the browser bidi algorithm.padding-inline-*,text-align: start), so settingdirmirrors alignment.diris always respected and never overridden.Tests
Added
i18n.test.ts(isRTLLanguage) andreader.test.ts(applyReaderDirection: RTL languages and region subtags, LTR untouched, explicitdirprecedence, stale reset on navigation).Known limitation
A page declaring neither a language nor a
dir, and whose language cannot be detected, still renders LTR (no signal to infer direction). Unchanged from current behavior and out of scope here.