Tpi.ldml suddenly became right-to-left in two different projects

Question

A couple of days ago user 1 reported to me that in one PT8 project, the text direction somehow changed to right-to-left. Yesterday, user 2 reported that the same thing happened in a Paratext resource, TPB12. Both projects have the same language file name: tpi.ldml. The two projects are managed by two different organizations. How could this happen?

Answer 1

Are any of the projects that contain tpi.ldml have a RTL language?

Comments

I have received more information from the users. One experienced the issue in PT7, and the other in PT8. The PT7 project uses “Tok Pisin.lds” rather than tpi,ldml. The symptoms were different for the two projects, so I now consider it a fluke that the two projects had similar, but not identical RTL issues a day apart.

The issue with the PT8 project (actually a resource) TPB12 is mysterious. Only the sfm markers were RTL, while the Tok Pisin text was correctly LTR, like this:

                                  3 c\
Man na meri sakim tok s\

To answer your question, there are translation helps projects in Tok Pisin that probably use ldml.tpi, and that may have occasional embedded Hebrew texts. The user who reported the issue, Martha Wade, does have access to these projects, and contributes to them. I can find out more details.

p.s. Martha was able to resolve the issue by uninstalling and reinstalling TPB12.

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I can see how this would happen in PT7 since language settings are shared between projects.
In 8.0, I can’t imagine how it might have happened since the language settings for each project are separate (including for resources).

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The first version of TPI that was released for PT8 displayed RTL as you describe by mistake. It was withdrawn quickly after the problem was discovered and an updated version released later on. So it makes sense that re-downloading the resource solved the problem—perhaps the first version was propagated to this user?

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I don’t fully understand how ldml files work, but your explanation seems to explain the observed issue. Thanks for sharing.