Friday, May 2, 2008

Hebrew in Gmail

Final Update, Sep. 12 2008: Google now has the new RTL button right there at the top of the email body section, rendering this script completely obsolete. If you're still using this script, or are now downloading it, consider looking for those buttons I just mentioned. Many thanks to everyone who downloaded, used, commented, became fans of, reported bugs and cursed me quietly when the script didn't work.
I'll be seeing you next time that the RTL user community is neglected by Google ;)
--itai 

Do you speak Hebrew or Arabic? If not, this blog wouldn't be all that interesting. Ever since Google came out with their new UI, it has been virtually impossible to write right-to-left emails (Hebrew, Arabic...). Extensions that were written for firefox to bring out the direction buttons became non-functional, because those buttons did not exist in the UI. When I found out this week that the Google guys actually bothered to write inherent Greasemonkey APIs, I figured that it wouldn't be all that difficult to write an extension that will enter right-to-left text in your email's body. Those of you who know a bit of HTML probably know that switching direction has become a piece of cake in recent years. So I found this signature script, that seemed to be doing something similar to what I had in mind. I modified it to become Heb4Gmail - a Greasemonkey extension that will insert right-to-left text into your email, allowing you to write nice Hebrew or Arabic emails. It even works great with mixed sentences (Hebrew and English together). If you use Gmail, and you write Hebrew emails, I think you'll find it useful. If you don't know what Greasemonkey is, or you don't use firefox, this isn't for you (but you're missing out on all the fun). Enjoy. Download it here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25811

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

For some unknown reason, your script happens not to work for me. I don't see any link to RTL or something. I have looked through the whole page but I can't find it.

Thank you.

(I'm using Firefox 3)

Itai Raz said...

There's some generic problem with FF3 that makes Greasemonkey and other extensions (like better gmail 2) not work sometimes.

Usually a restart of the browser helps.

If you have better gmail 2 a good way of checking whether you are experiencing this same issue is by turning out the html signature feature in better gmail 2. If you don't see its pane on the left side, than you won't see RTL4Gmail either. If you do see it, but still can't see RTL, please let me know!

Thanks for using.

symoniri said...

it is not work in ff3 and both of old and new gmail.

Itai Raz said...

Well...
It does work, but there are issues with addons in FF3 in general. I hope they will be fixed soon.
See my post above.

Itai Raz said...

FF3 issues. check the script page for updates. No solution right now - it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

--itai

kpozin said...

Settings > General > Language > Show all language options > Right-to-left editing support on