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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 ??).

user.dz
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mathematical.coffee
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1 Answers1

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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:

user.dz
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