Improved rtl support

[emilyyyylime]

tablex's align argument supposedly takes into account the context of the table when set to auto (the default), but seems to default to left even with text(dir: rtl). Furthermore, the order of the columns goes left-to-right, and I could not find any way to override that behaviour (unlike align, which only requires a simple align: right).

[emilyyyylime]

Okay I've figured out map-rows: (idx, row) => row.map(c => (..c, x: 4 - c.x)) as a temporary workaround, but the core issue still stands I believe

[PgBiel]

How does the default table behave for your specified use cases?

(Also, you can try align: start for text direction-aware alignment)

[emilyyyylime]

align: start has the same effect as align: right with rtl text, it seems to be a more sane default if you ask me. The default table has the behaviour I described as expected, with the column order following the text direction order.

[emilyyyylime]

Oh and trying to make rowspans work with this is an absolute pain. I'd go ahead and say it just should not be attempted until a proper fix for this is implemented

[PgBiel]

I see. Unfortunately, we cannot currently detect if text was set to RTL (blocked by https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/763), but we could add a rtl: bool toggle.

As I see it, however, the ideal way to tackle this would be to change the order of columns in your own data. It seems a bit weird for me for the table to produce output in a different order than the parameters it received (at least assuming we are using auto-positioning). Still, we could investigate adding this down the road. Thank you for reporting!

[emilyyyylime]

It seems a bit weird for me for the table to produce output in a different order than the parameters it received

Problem is, from the perspective of a native rtl-language speaker, in a rtl document — this describes the current behaviour. If I'm working with numerical data, sure; but if my table contains rtl text, I expect cells to be added right to left. The current behaviour is the one that produced output in a different order than the table received

[PgBiel]

I see, thanks for the info. I think it could be reasonable to add a toggle for this, though the implementation might get a bit complex for spans. I'll have to give this some further thought.

[emilyyyylime]

Great! Thanks for looking into this