al_rtl

Right-to-left language support for al-folio v1.x. Implements the plugin proposed in al-folio#3544.

Install

gem "al_rtl", "= 1.0.0"

and in _config.yml — both lists, or the plugin is inert:

plugins:
  - al_rtl

That is all the configuration most sites need. Direction follows the page's lang, falling back to site.lang:

---
layout: post
title: یک پست نمونه
lang: fa
---

Recognised by default: ar arc az ckb dv fa he ku ps sd ug ur yi. To narrow or extend that list:

al_rtl:
  langs: [fa, ar]

What it does

  • Adds dir="rtl" and a correct lang to <html> on RTL pages.
  • Loads a small RTL stylesheet, only on those pages.
  • Provides {% if_rtl %}…{% endif_rtl %} and an al_rtl_direction filter for layouts that need to branch.

Differences from the source PR

The 2022 proposal targeted the Bootstrap-era theme, and three things did not port.

dir goes on <html>, not a wrapper div. This is the substantive change. Direction on a wrapper leaves everything outside it — navbar, footer, skip links, scrollbar placement — laid out left-to-right, and it is also what CSS logical properties and Tailwind's rtl: variant key off. Setting it on the root element is what makes the browser's own bidi handling apply to the whole document.

align="right" is gone. It was deprecated in HTML 4.01, does nothing under a Tailwind reset, and conflates alignment with direction — RTL text is right-aligned because of direction, and forcing it breaks centred headings.

No manual sidebar flipping. The original swapped the TOC sidebar's column order in Liquid. With dir set correctly the grid mirrors on its own, so that logic is not needed.

One thing the original did not handle: code and maths stay left-to-right. Source code, shell transcripts, BibTeX and rendered equations are LTR content no matter what language surrounds them, and letting them inherit rtl reorders operators and punctuation into nonsense.

Fonts

No webfont is bundled. The source PR pulled Vazirmatn from Google Fonts for every page, which is a third-party request and a privacy consideration that should be the site owner's choice. Add one through al-folio's normal font configuration if you want it.

Development

bundle install
bundle exec rake test
npm ci && npm run lint:prettier

License

MIT