We don't know which languages are right to left only - will move to the backlog for now for looking at when we can localize the page.

Since the page has been localized and text-direction has been set on the HTML element (although at the moment l10n is slightly broken as we work out some caching issues), I've started work on some minor changes that should improve RTL readability

• correcting the direction of the search suggestions
• placement of the icons in the sister project links.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/339631/

In T129771#3053020, @Jdrewniak wrote:

Since the page has been localized and text-direction has been set on the HTML element (although at the moment l10n is slightly broken as we work out some caching issues), I've started work on some minor changes that should improve RTL readability

• correcting the direction of the search suggestions
• placement of the icons in the sister project links.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/339631/

Judging by the screenshot, I think this is still far from how the page should look like in RTL mode.

• The thumbnails should be on the right. It's how it's displayed on mobile, and portal presenting results differently will disrupt RTL users.
• The language selector should be on the left.
• The entire footer should be RTL, not just the text, meaning the projects should be on the left and the mobile apps on the right.
• The WMF logo and Wikipedia logo should be on the right.

We can go with this patch first, and keep on improving later, or we can make a bigger patch now. What do you think @Jdrewniak ? (and @Amire80 )

Patch https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/339631/ is by no means a complete RTL solution, but rather addresses the most basic readability issues.

@JGirault that's a pretty comprehesive list of RTL todo's, but I wonder how much of those we can address without CSSJanus. All we really have to play with (client-side) is inline-block for layout, which introduces it's own set of challenges.

I guess since this is merged https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/rWPOR423c563b34d900e17e7c2407455ba9f1012d9d34 we can use html[dir='rtl'] .class-names {} for RTL specific styling, which would introduce a maintanence cost, but that's the best I can come up with right now.

@Jdrewniak it seems that https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/339631/ broke how projects display on mobile:

Change 341783 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdrewniak):
[wikimedia/portals] Improving mobile layout

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/341783

@JGirault the above patch should fix that

Change 341783 merged by jenkins-bot:
[wikimedia/portals] Improving mobile layout

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/341783