Guy Rutenberg » cssrtl.py http://www.guyrutenberg.com Keeping track of what I do Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:44:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 An Early Release of the New cssrtl.py-2.0 http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/09/20/an-early-release-of-the-new-cssrtl-py-2-0/ http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/09/20/an-early-release-of-the-new-cssrtl-py-2-0/#comments Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:00:50 +0000 Guy http://www.guyrutenberg.com/?p=578 It has been three years since I’ve released the original version of cssrtl.py (and two since it’s re-release). The old version did a nice job, but experience gained during that time led me to write from scratch a new version. I’ve detailed more than a month ago, the basic principles and ideas that guided me to design a better tool to help adapting CSS files from left-to-right to right-to-left.

The guidelines weren’t just empty words, they were written while working on the Hebrew adaptation to the Fusion theme and in the same time writing a new proof-of-concept version of cssrtl.py. The original intent was to release a more mature version of that code when it will be completed. However, due to the apparent shortage of time in the present and foreseeable future, I can’t see myself complete the project any time soon. So following the “release early” mantra, I’ve decided to release the code as-is. As I said, the code is in working state, but not polished, so it may be of benefit but may contain bugs. If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, I would be glad to hear.

Download

You can download the new version from here: cssrtl.py-2.0.tar.bz2. The code is available under the GPLv2 or any later version.

Usage

The new version works by creating a seperate css “fix” file that fixes the directionality of the css styles.

./cssrtl.py < main.css > main-rtl.css

Afterward, just link the main-rtl.css after main.css in your HTML files.

]]> http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/09/20/an-early-release-of-the-new-cssrtl-py-2-0/feed/ 0 Designing a Better a CSS RTL Convertor http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/08/05/designing-a-better-a-css-rtl-convertor/ http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/08/05/designing-a-better-a-css-rtl-convertor/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:41:15 +0000 Guy http://www.guyrutenberg.com/?p=418 About a year and a half ago I’ve released cssrtl.py, a script that translates CSS code to RTL. The script was designed to be fully autonomous, however translating CSS code is a complex task, as not all the information needed to make the translation is available in the CSS files. While cssrtl.py did a very good job on some tasks it lacks on several issues:

  1. When a design update is released, one cannot use previous translation work.
  2. When things don't go smooth, it's hard to find out why.
  3. Complex CSS can't be translated automatically, as it requires understanding of the structure of the corresponding html files and how the CSS will be used by future code.


There are two basic ideas behind building a new and improved replacement for cssrtl.py. The first, instead of translating the CSS file, the script will create a patch that translates the code. This would allow to see the changes required for RTL changes and easily adapt new version of the CSS code. This also solves the second problem, as it makes clear what changes where made by the script and what are part of the original code. The other change takes the script from trying to be autonomous to human guided translation. Instead of making all the changes completely by itself, the script only makes trivial changes (which are most changes) and clearly leaves comments guiding the human operator on what work remained to be done. This approach saves a lot of time as the script works only does what it can and doesn't hinder the translation efforts by trying to translate code that it can't translate properly.

Following this new design for CSS to RTL convertor, I've built a new version of cssrtl.py. The new version is still premature work, and some work needs to be done before I'll be able to release it publicly. However, it already revealed itself handy when I adapted a WordPress theme to Hebrew, which I intend to release soon.

Update 2009-08-15: I've released the mentioned WordPress theme, it's RTL port of the Fusion theme.

]]> http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/08/05/designing-a-better-a-css-rtl-convertor/feed/ 2 Convert CSS layout to RTL – cssrtl.py http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2007/12/28/convert-css-layout-to-rtl-cssrtlpy/ http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2007/12/28/convert-css-layout-to-rtl-cssrtlpy/#comments Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:28:12 +0000 Guy http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2007/12/28/convert-css-layout-to-rtl-cssrtlpy/ This is a re-release of a script of mine that helps convert CSS layouts to RTL. I originally released it about a year ago but it was lost when I moved to the new blog. The script, cssrtl.py, utilizes a bunch of regular expressions to translate a given CSS layout to RTL.

Download

You can download the script from here: cssrtl.py.

Usage

Using the script is pretty simple. Just pass the name of the script to cssrtl.py and he will automatically translate it for you.

Example:
python cssrt.py main.css

You can use the -o flag to specify a different output file instead of overwriting the existing file.

If the CSS style for the body tag is missing a direction statement, you should add the -d flag to the list of command line arguments. This will cause the script to add one for you when translating the layout.

See python cssrtl.py --help for more information.

Limitations

While this script is pretty useful as it is, it still isn’t perfect. The major limitation, is that the script doesn’t automatically mirrors images used in the layout. So if your layout contains images you will need to flip them manually (however the script will position them in right place by automatically). Another limitation is that the script doesn’t alway handle correctly scripts with IE hacks, so it always good to keep a backup and manually check the result on IE.

Overall, despite some (minor) limitations, the script is very useful, and it helped me a lot when having to translate CSS layouts to RTL. I’ve successfully used it to translate WordPress, Joomla, Druple and MediaWiki themes with minimal intervention on my side, thus saving a lot of my time. If you find the script useful, it will be nice of your to send a word. Also the script is released under the GPL so if you have any patches/improvements, please send them.

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