Add BiDirectional Text formatting utilites to the i18n library.

lib/i18n/bidi_utils.dart

+// Copyright (c) 2012, the Dart project authors.  Please see the AUTHORS file
+// for details. All rights reserved. Use of this source code is governed by a
+// BSD-style license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
+
+#library('bidi_utils');
+
+/**
+ * Bidi stands for Bi-directional text.
+ * According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-directional_text:
+ * Bi-directional text is text containing text in both text directionalities,
+ * both right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR). It generally involves text
+ * containing different types of alphabets, but may also refer to boustrophedon,
+ * which is changing text directionality in each row.
+ *
+ * This file provides some utility classes for determining directionality of
+ * text, switching CSS layout from LTR to RTL, and other normalizing utilities
+ * needed when switching between RTL and LTR formatting.
+ *
+ * It defines the TextDirection class which is used to represent directionality
+ * of text,
+ * In most cases, it is preferable to use bidi_formatter.dart, which provides
+ * bidi functionality in the given directional context, instead of using
+ * bidi_utils.dart directly.
+ */
+
+/** Class containing constants to represent the directionality of text. */
+class TextDirection {
+  static final LTR = const TextDirection._('LTR', 'ltr');
+  static final RTL = const TextDirection._('RTL', 'rtl');
+  static final UNKNOWN = const TextDirection._('UNKNOWN', 'ltr');

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

I presume the 'ltr' on UNKNOWN means that we assume left to right in a span if
we don't know, but that should probably be spelled out.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Done.

+
+  /** A string value representation of the directionality constant. */
+  final String value;

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

Probably more informative to enumerate the values. e.g. Indicates the direction
of the text. One of: 'LTR', 'RTL', 'UNKNOWN'.  Do we need to say that it's a
String, or would that be pulled out automatically from the definition?

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Done.

+  /**
+   * A string indicating the directionality that should be indicated by the text
+   * for explicitly specifything the direction in a span tag.
+   */

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

Same as above. Also specifying is spelled wrong.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Done.

+  final String spanText;
+
+  const TextDirection._(this.value, this.spanText);
+}
+
+class BidiUtils {
+  /** Unicode "Left-To-Right Embedding" (LRE) character. */
+  static final LRE = '\u202A';
+
+  /** Unicode "Right-To-Left Embedding" (RLE) character. */
+  static final RLE = '\u202B';
+
+  /** Unicode "Pop Directional Formatting" (PDF) character. */
+  static final PDF = '\u202C';
+
+  /** Unicode "Left-To-Right Mark" (LRM) character. */
+  static final LRM = '\u200E';
+
+  /** Unicode "Right-To-Left Mark" (RLM) character. */
+  static final RLM = '\u200F';
+
+  /** Constant to define the threshold of RTL directionality. */
+  static num _RTL_DETECTION_THRESHOLD = 0.40;
+
+  /**
+   * Practical patterns to identify strong LTR and RTL characters, respectively.
+   * These patterns are not completely correct according to the Unicode
+   * standard. They are simplified for performance and small code size.
+   */
+  static final String _LTR_CHARS =
+      @'A-Za-z\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u02B8\u0300-\u0590'
+      @'\u0800-\u1FFF\u2C00-\uFB1C\uFDFE-\uFE6F\uFEFD-\uFFFF';
+  static final String _RTL_CHARS = @'\u0591-\u07FF\uFB1D-\uFDFD\uFE70-\uFEFC';
+
+  /**
+   * Returns the input [text] with spaces instead of HTML tags or HTML escapes,
+   * which is helpful for text directionality estimation.
+   * Note: This function should not be used in other contexts.
+   * It does not deal well with many things: comments, script,
+   * elements, style elements, dir attribute,`>' in quoted attribute values,
+   * etc. But it does handle well enough the most common use cases.
+   * Since the worst that can happen as a result of these shortcomings is that
+   * the wrong directionality will be estimated, we have not invested in
+   * improving this. If [isStripNeeded] is true, this function does the
+   * stripping, otherwise the function returns the input unchanged.
+   */
+  static String stripHtmlIfNeeded(String text, bool isStripNeeded) {
+    if (isStripNeeded) {
+      // The regular expression is simplified for an HTML tag (opening or 
+      // closing) or an HTML escape. We might want to skip over such expressions
+      // when estimating the text directionality.
+      return text.replaceAll(const RegExp(@'<[^>]*>|&[^;]+;'), ' ');
+    } else {
+      return text;
+    }
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Determines if the first character in [text] with strong directionality is
+   * LTR. If [isHtml] is true, the text is HTML or HTML-escaped.
+   */
+  static bool startsWithLtr(String text, [isHtml=false]) {
+    return const RegExp('^[^$_RTL_CHARS]*[$_LTR_CHARS]').hasMatch(

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

That comes out really nicely. I like the use of string interpolation to re-use
partial regexes and make the whole thing comprehensible.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Done.

+        BidiUtils.stripHtmlIfNeeded(text, isHtml));
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Determines if the first character in [text] with strong directionality is
+   * RTL. If [isHtml] is true, the text is HTML or HTML-escaped.
+   */

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

I worry a bit with these about people calling many of these types of methods and
repeatedly stripping the HTML (and then complaining that it's slow :-)  It feels
like there might reasonably be an object in amongst all these methods, that if
you wanted to do something complicated to a string you would create one and it
would remember those bits of state. And maybe it's the formatter object, but
it's not clear. And hard to know without understanding more about how these
methods would be used in practice.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

As mentioned at the top of this file, bidi_formatter should be the primary
location for users to access to format text. The methods here are mainly to
provide supplemental information if you're doing something odd with the layout.
They shouldn't be called frequently. I started re-writing these methods so that
they were no longer static, and you could construct a BidiUtil object for a
particular string, but the frequency that these are used combined with the then
unusual way to determine properties about strings for these methods versus the
rest, it seemed more trouble than it's worth.

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/25 23:29:56]

OK

+  static bool startsWithRtl(String text, [isHtml=false]) {
+    return const RegExp('^[^$_LTR_CHARS]*[$_RTL_CHARS]').hasMatch(
+        BidiUtils.stripHtmlIfNeeded(text, isHtml));
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Determines if the exit directionality (ie, the last strongly-directional
+   * character in [text] is LTR. If [isHtml] is true, the text is HTML or
+   * HTML-escaped.
+   */
+  static bool endsWithLtr(String text, [isHtml=false]) {
+    return const RegExp('[$_LTR_CHARS][^$_RTL_CHARS]*\$').hasMatch(
+        BidiUtils.stripHtmlIfNeeded(text, isHtml));
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Determines if the exit directionality (ie, the last strongly-directional
+   * character in [text] is RTL. If [isHtml] is true, the text is HTML or
+   * HTML-escaped.
+   */
+  static bool endsWithRtl(String text, [isHtml=false]) {
+    return const RegExp('[$_RTL_CHARS][^$_LTR_CHARS]*\$').hasMatch(
+        BidiUtils.stripHtmlIfNeeded(text, isHtml));
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Determines if the given [text] has any LTR characters in it.
+   * If [isHtml] is true, the text is HTML or HTML-escaped.
+   */
+  static bool hasAnyLtr(String text, [isHtml=false]) {
+    return const RegExp(@'[' '$_LTR_CHARS' @']').hasMatch(
+        BidiUtils.stripHtmlIfNeeded(text, isHtml));
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Determines if the given [text] has any RTL characters in it.
+   * If [isHtml] is true, the text is HTML or HTML-escaped.
+   */
+  static bool hasAnyRtl(String text, [isHtml=false]) {
+    return const RegExp(@'[' '$_RTL_CHARS' @']').hasMatch(
+        BidiUtils.stripHtmlIfNeeded(text, isHtml));
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Check if a BCP 47 / III [languageString] indicates an RTL language.
+   *
+   * i.e. either:
+   * - a language code explicitly specifying one of the right-to-left scripts,
+   *   e.g. "az-Arab", or
+   * - a language code specifying one of the languages normally written in a
+   *   right-to-left script, e.g. "fa" (Farsi), except ones explicitly
+   *   specifying Latin or Cyrillic script (which are the usual LTR
+   *   alternatives).
+   *
+   * The list of right-to-left scripts appears in the 100-199 range in
+   * http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-num.html, of which Arabic and
+   * Hebrew are by far the most widely used. We also recognize Thaana, N'Ko, and
+   * Tifinagh, which also have significant modern usage. The rest (Syriac,
+   * Samaritan, Mandaic, etc.) seem to have extremely limited or no modern usage
+   * and are not recognized.
+   * The languages usually written in a right-to-left script are taken as those
+   * with Suppress-Script: Hebr|Arab|Thaa|Nkoo|Tfng  in
+   * http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry,
+   * as well as Sindhi (sd) and Uyghur (ug).
+   * The presence of other subtags of the language code, e.g. regions like EG
+   * (Egypt), is ignored.
+   */
+  static bool isRtlLanguage(String languageString) { //TODO(case insensitive??)
+    return const RegExp(@'^(ar|dv|he|iw|fa|nqo|ps|sd|ug|ur|yi|.*[-_]'
+        @'(Arab|Hebr|Thaa|Nkoo|Tfng))(?!.*[-_](Latn|Cyrl)($|-|_))'
+        @'($|-|_)', ignoreCase : true).hasMatch(languageString);

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

Is a regular expression, especially a 3-line one, really the right solution for
this? Or wouldn't we be better off using even a simple regex that splits on - or
_ to divide it into fields and then have logic based on those field values.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

The language code specification system is fairly complex:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/bcp/bcp47.txt There is an order that the codes can
be provided in, but specific codes for specific languages can be omitted because
they're the default AND the different subtags can have different lengths, so
it's not easy to determine what subtag distinguishes what without parsing the
entire string, and therefore making this function vastly more complicated. We
can revisit this if we start needing to do fancy things with language codes and
have a language code class, but for now, it seems to be more trouble than it's
worth.

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/25 23:29:56]

Grumble, grumble, ok.

+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Enforce the [html] snippet in RTL directionality regardless of overall
+   * context. If the html piece was enclosed by a tag, the direction will be 
+   * applied to existing tag, otherwise a span tag will be added as wrapper.
+   * For this reason, if html snippet start with with tag, this tag must enclose
+   * the whole piece. If the tag already has a direction specified, this new one 
+   * will override existing one in behavior (tested on FF and IE).
+   */

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

How badly do we need these? The other things don't use it, it's trying to parse
and modify HTML, which is scary, and comments like "(tested on FF and IE)" sound
rather scary. Is that true for this code, or was that copied from the Closure
comment?

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Since this is being developed not on a Windows machine, I can't test it on IE,
but since I'm replicating the closure behavior here exactly, I preserved the
comment intact from the closure library.

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/25 23:29:56]

Maybe we should change it to something like "should work on FF and IE". And
maybe we should mention Chrome.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/26 01:04:29]

Done.

+  static String enforceRtlInHtml(String html) {
+    return _enforceInHtmlHelper(html, 'rtl');
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Enforce RTL on both end of the given [text] using unicode BiDi formatting
+   * characters RLE and PDF.
+   */
+  static String enforceRtlInText(String text) {
+    return '$RLE$text$PDF';
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Enforce the [html] snippet in LTR directionality regardless of overall
+   * context. If the html piece was enclosed by a tag, the direction will be 
+   * applied to existing tag, otherwise a span tag will be added as wrapper.
+   * For this reason, if html snippet start with with tag, this tag must enclose
+   * the whole piece. If the tag already has a direction specified, this new one 
+   * will override existing one in behavior (tested on FF and IE).
+   */
+  static String enforceLtrInHtml(String html) {
+    return _enforceInHtmlHelper(html, 'ltr');
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Enforce LTR on both end of the given [text] using unicode BiDi formatting
+   * characters LRE and PDF.
+   */
+  static String enforceLtrInText(String text) {
+    return '$LRE$text$PDF';
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Enforce the [html] snippet in the desired [direction] regardless of overall
+   * context. If the html piece was enclosed by a tag, the direction will be 
+   * applied to existing tag, otherwise a span tag will be added as wrapper.
+   * For this reason, if html snippet start with with tag, this tag must enclose
+   * the whole piece. If the tag already has a direction specified, this new one 
+   * will override existing one in behavior (tested on FF and IE).
+   */
+  static String _enforceInHtmlHelper(String html, String direction) {
+    if (html.startsWith('<')) {
+      StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
+      var startIndex = 0;
+      Iterator iterator = const RegExp('<\\w+').allMatches(
+          html).iterator();

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

This code seems confusing. Why are we asking for allMatches and only using the
first. Shouldn't we ask for firstMatch?

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Fixed. That was from a refactor that apparently didn't get fully completed.

+      if (iterator.hasNext()) {
+        Match match = iterator.next();
+        buffer.add(html.substring(
+            startIndex, match.end())).add(' dir=$direction');
+        startIndex = match.end();
+      }
+      return buffer.add(html.substring(startIndex)).toString();
+    }
+    // '\n' is important for FF so that it won't incorrectly merge span groups.
+    return '\n<span dir=$direction>$html</span>';
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Apply bracket guard to [str] using html span tag. This is to address the 
+   * problem of messy bracket display that frequently happens in RTL layout.
+   * If [isRtlContext] is true, then we explicitly want to wrap in a span of RTL
+   * directionality, regardless of the estimated directionality.
+   */
+  static String guardBracketInHtml(String str, [bool isRtlContext]) {
+    var useRtl = isRtlContext == null ? hasAnyRtl(str) : isRtlContext;
+    RegExp regexp = 
+        const RegExp(@'(\(.*?\)+)|(\[.*?\]+)|(\{.*?\}+)|(&lt;.*?(&gt;)+)');
+    if (useRtl) {

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

Is a regex really necessary here? Seems like string starts with one of '([{<'
and ends with the corresponding close. Maybe the regex is the easiest way to
write that, but I don't know that it's the most efficient, and certainly not the
clearest.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Renamed to make clearer?

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/25 23:29:56]

Not a fan of all these regexes, but it'll do.

+      return _guardBracketHelper(str, regexp, '<span dir=rtl>', '</span>');

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

probably worth a statement to set a string to 'rtl' or 'ltr' as appropriate and
then have only the one call with an interpolated value.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Done.

+    }
+    return _guardBracketHelper(str, regexp, '<span dir=ltr>', '</span>');
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Apply bracket guard to [str] using LRM and RLM. This is to address the 
+   * problem of messy bracket display that frequently happens in RTL layout.
+   * This version works for both plain text and html, but in some cases is not
+   * as good as guardBracketInHtml.
+   * If [isRtlContext] is true, then we explicitly want to wrap in a span of RTL
+   * directionality, regardless of the estimated directionality.
+   */
+  static String guardBracketInText(String str, [bool isRtlContext]) {
+    var useRtl = isRtlContext == null ? hasAnyRtl(str) : isRtlContext;
+    var mark = useRtl ? RLM : LRM;
+    return _guardBracketHelper(str,
+        const RegExp(@'(\(.*?\)+)|(\[.*?\]+)|(\{.*?\}+)|(<.*?>+)'), mark, mark);
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * (Mostly) reimplements the $& functionality of "replace" in JavaScript.
+   * Given a [str] and the [regexp] to match with, optionally supply a string to
+   * be inserted [before] the match and/or [after]. For example, 
+   * `_guardBracketHelper('firetruck', const RegExp('truck'), 'hydrant', '!')`
+   * would return 'firehydrant!'.
+   */
+  // TODO(efortuna): Get rid of this once this is implemented in Dart.
+  // See Issue 2979.
+  static String _guardBracketHelper(String str, RegExp regexp, [String before,
+      String after]) {
+    StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
+    var startIndex = 0;
+    Iterable matches = regexp.allMatches(str);
+    for (Match match in matches) {
+      buffer.add(str.substring(startIndex, match.start())).add(before);
+      buffer.add(str.substring(match.start(), match.end())).add(after);
+      startIndex = match.end();
+    }
+    return buffer.add(str.substring(startIndex)).toString();
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Estimates the directionality of [text] using the best known
+   * general-purpose method (using relative word counts). A 
+   * TextDirection.UNKNOWN return value indicates completely neutral input.
+   * [isHtml] is true if [text] HTML or HTML-escaped.
+   *
+   * If the number of RTL words is above a certain percentage of the total
+   * number of strongly directional words, returns RTL.
+   * Otherwise, if any words are strongly or weakly LTR, returns LTR.
+   * Otherwise, returns UNKNOWN, which is used to mean `neutral'.
+   * Numbers and URLs are counted as weakly LTR.
+   */
+  static TextDirection estimateDirection(String text, [bool isHtml=false]) {
+    text = BidiUtils.stripHtmlIfNeeded(text, isHtml);
+    var rtlCount = 0;
+    var total = 0;
+    var hasWeaklyLtr = false;
+    // Split a string into 'words' for directionality estimation based on
+    // relative word counts.
+    for (String token in text.split(const RegExp(@'\s+'))) {
+      if (BidiUtils.startsWithRtl(token)) {
+        rtlCount++;
+        total++;
+      } else if (const RegExp(@'^http://').hasMatch(token)) {
+        // Checked if token looks like something that must always be LTR even in
+        // RTL text, such as a URL.
+        hasWeaklyLtr = true;
+      } else if (BidiUtils.hasAnyLtr(token)) {
+        total++;
+      } else if (const RegExp(@'\d').hasMatch(token)) {
+        // Checked if token contains any numerals.
+        hasWeaklyLtr = true;
+      }
+    }
+
+    if (total == 0) {
+      return hasWeaklyLtr ? TextDirection.LTR : TextDirection.UNKNOWN;
+    } else if (rtlCount > BidiUtils._RTL_DETECTION_THRESHOLD * total) {
+      return TextDirection.RTL;
+    } else {
+      return TextDirection.LTR;
+    }
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Find the first index in [str] of the first closing parenthesis that does
+   * not match an opening parenthesis.
+   */
+  static int _unmatchedParenIndex(String str) {
+    int sum = 0;
+    int index = 0;
+    while (sum >= 0 || index > str.length) {
+      int char = str.charCodeAt(index);
+      if (char == '('.charCodeAt(0)) sum++;
+      else if (char == ')'.charCodeAt(0)) sum--;
+      index++;
+    }
+    return index;
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Reimplementing the $num capability in the JavaScript regular expression
+   * "replace" method. Returns a Map with keys 'one'-'five' (yes,
+   * currently only implemented for up to five $num elements, since this
+   * function should be a temporary measure.), where dict\['one'\] is the
+   * equivalent of $1 in JavaScript, dict\['two'\] is $2, etc.
+   */
+  static Map _backreferenceHelper(String usr_str, String regexp) {
+    var keys = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five'];
+    Iterator iterator = keys.iterator();
+    Map dict = {};
+    int i = regexp.indexOf('(');
+    Match match = new RegExp(regexp).firstMatch(usr_str);
+    if (match == null) return null;
+    String fullMatchedString = usr_str.substring(match.start(), match.end());
+    while (i > -1) {
+      Match beforeOneMatch = new RegExp(
+          regexp.substring(0, i)).firstMatch(fullMatchedString);
+      // Matching parenthesis is a context free language! We can't use
+      // regular expressions to help us here. :-( Awesome! (not really)
+      // Also note this code should not be used un-modified for general purpose
+      // $1, $2 support -- technically to be correct you need to match with
+      // regexp.substring(closingParenIndex+i+1) on the fullMatchedString, and
+      // then subtract the remainder as $1. We're able to take this shortcut
+      // here because we know for the particular regular expressions that this
+      // is used, this doesn't matter.
+      // TODO(efortuna): rewrite all this silliness when we have $1, $2 support
+      // in RegExp. See Issue 2979.
+      int closingParenIndex = _unmatchedParenIndex(regexp.substring(i+1));
+      String partialString = fullMatchedString.substring(beforeOneMatch.end());
+      Match oneMatch = new RegExp(regexp.substring(i,
+          closingParenIndex + i + 1)).firstMatch(partialString);
+      dict[iterator.next()] = partialString.substring(oneMatch.start(),
+          oneMatch.end());
+      i = regexp.indexOf('(', closingParenIndex + i + 1);
+    }
+    return dict;
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Replace the double and single quote directly after a Hebrew character in
+   * [str] with GERESH and GERSHAYIM. This is most likely the user's intention.
+   */
+  static String normalizeHebrewQuote(String str) {
+    String regex1 =  @'([\u0591-\u05f2])"';
+    String regex2 =  @"([\u0591-\u05f2])'";
+    Map keys = _backreferenceHelper(str, regex1);
+    Map keys2 = _backreferenceHelper(str, regex2);
+    if (keys != null) {
+      str = str.replaceAll(new RegExp(regex1), '${keys["one"]}\u05f4');

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

Does this actually work? With a hard-coded "one"?  What if there were two
occurences?

This looks like another one of those things I wouldn't implement with a regex,
particularly if I had to implement regex replacement in order to do it. It seems
like looping over the string appending to a buffer and looking for a quote where
the previous character was Hebrew, then appending one extra, would be at least
as simple.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Removed regular expression version.

+    }
+    if (keys2 != null) {
+      str= str.replaceAll(new RegExp(regex2), '${keys2["one"]}\u05f3');
+    }
+    return str;
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Swap location parameters and 'left'/'right' in CSS specification in
+   * [cssStr]. The processed string will be suited for RTL layout. Though this
+   * function can cover most cases, there are always exceptions. It is suggested
+   * the developer put those exceptions in separate group of CSS string.
+   */

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

Do we really need to do this? Especially for CSS, this seems like it would want
to be done on the server, or ahead of time. Telling developers to write two
versions of the CSS (or Jacob thinks there's a preprocessor or compiler that
would do it for you properly) seems better. And then if we did the previous
method without a regex we could also take out the polyfill backreferenceHelper.

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

Done.

+  static String mirrorCSS(String cssStr) {
+    var regex = ':\\s*([.\\d][.\\w]*)\\s+([.\\d][.\\w]*)\\s+([.\\d][.\\w]*)'
+        '\\s+([.\\d][.\\w]*)';
+    var tempStr = '%%%%';
+    Map keys = _backreferenceHelper(cssStr, regex);
+    if (keys != null) {
+      // Reverse dimensions regex.
+      cssStr = cssStr.replaceAll(new RegExp(regex),
+          ':${keys["one"]} ${keys["four"]} ${keys["three"]} ${keys["two"]}');
+    }
+    // Swap left and right.
+    return cssStr.
+        replaceAll(const RegExp('left', ignoreCase:true), tempStr).
+        replaceAll(const RegExp('right', ignoreCase:true), 'left').
+        replaceAll(new RegExp(tempStr), 'right');
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Check the directionality of [str], return true if the piece of
+   * text should be laid out in RTL direction. If [isHtml] is true, the string
+   * is HTML or HTML-escaped.
+   */
+  static bool detectRtlDirectionality(String str, [bool isHtml]) {

[Alan Knight, 2012/06/22 00:16:53]

Wouldn't this be better called e.g. isRTL? 

[Emily Fortuna, 2012/06/25 20:25:35]

isRTL is reserved for knowing for certain that the direction is RTL. This is an
estimation. isRTL can be found in bidi_formatter.dart

+    return estimateDirection(str, isHtml) == TextDirection.RTL;
+  }
+}