RE: [widgets] dir and span elements

Hi Marcos,

Thanks for your quick work on this.

I have a few comments. Hope they are helpful...

[1] 7.16. The span Element
http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/#the-span-element 
There may be cases where span is also used to support xml:lang (not just dir).

[2] same section
I think the example could be improved by having something inside the span with punctuation (eg. exclamation mark) or such, and maybe the description should be in English - otherwise you'd probably want to put the dir on the widget tag and have English in the span.  Should I try to find another example ?


[3] same section
"it allows authors to override the Unicode bidirectional algorithm by explicitly specifying a direction override, as specified in [BIDI]."

There is no link on [BIDI], and there is no [BIDI] reference at the bottom of the page.

[4] same text
"it allows authors to override the Unicode bidirectional algorithm by explicitly specifying a direction override, as specified in [BIDI]."
=> 
"it allows authors to set the base direction for the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, as specified in [BIDI]."

I propose this change because the dir attribute as you define it doesn't have the rlo and lro values that would mean 'override', it has only ltr and rtl, which define the base direction.  I don't know if the 'as specified in...' bit is still relevant, since I don't know what that refers to.


[5] dir attribute
http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/#global-attributes

Any reason that you don't specify rlo and lro values recommend in the ITS spec?  (They aren't use much, but I was wondering whether there was a particular reason that they aren't included.)


[6] same section
"An empty value of dir is used on an element B to override a specification of dir on an enclosing element A, without specifying another direction. Within B, it is considered that there is no directional information available, just as if dir had not been specified on B or any of its ancestors (see fourth example below)."

We discussed this during the i18n telecon.  We think having an empty value is a little odd, given that the direction has to be either ltr or rtl.  (For instance, it has no real effect or meaning in the final example below this text that we can detect.) We also think that is may cause some unintended problems for embedded text by creating inappropriate embeddings. We suspect that what you really need is something that we are about to propose for HTML5 (in a working draft that should hopefully be published as FPWD today), ie. a bdi attribute (bidi isolate).  It will be a little while before that is a stable document, however. 

In the meantime, our suggestion is that you drop the empty value for dir, and revisit this in a later version of the spec.



[7] same section, examples
The first example looks a little out of kilter wrt markup. (if you need help to sort it out just shout)  
Who provided the Persian translations? (I'd like to suggest some alternative examples, but I can't translate into Persian.)


I hope those comments are helpful.

RI

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/




> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-i18n-core-request@w3.org [mailto:public-i18n-core-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Marcos Caceres
> Sent: 26 February 2010 17:45
> To: public-webapps
> Cc: public-i18n-core@w3.org
> Subject: [widgets] dir and span elements
> 
> Hi i18n WG,
> I've added the dir attribute and span elements to the Widgets P&C
> Specification, as well as a bunch of examples (which are wrong, so I
> would really appreciate some help with these!).
> 
> The dir attribute is specified here:
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/#global-attributes
> 
> The span element is specified here:
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/#the-span-element
> 
> The processing step that defers to the yet to be written [WIDGET-BIDI]
> specification is defined here:
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/#rule-for-getting-text-content
> 
> The specification makes it mandatory that a user agent implement the
> WIDGET-BIDI spec:
> 
> "A user agent is an implementation of this specification that also
> supports [XML], [XMLNS], [UTF-8], [DOM3CORE], [SNIFF], [WIDGETS-BIDI],
> and [ZIP]..."
> 
> We would appreciate your review and any assistance you can provide.
> In particular, we would appreciate your guidance into what would go
> into the Widgets Bidi specification (i.e., how processing is done for
> dir and span). At the moment, we only have the following text for such
> a specification (based on HTML5's bdo element):
> 
> [[
> If an element has the dir attribute set to the exact value ltr, then
> for the purposes of the bidi algorithm, the user agent must act as if
> there was a U+202D LEFT-TO-RIGHT OVERRIDE character at the start of
> the element, and a U+202C POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING at the end of
> the
> element.
> 
> If the element has the dir attribute set to the exact value rtl, then
> for the purposes of the bidi algorithm, the user agent must act as if
> there was a U+202E RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE character at the start of
> the element, and a U+202C POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING at the end of
> the
> element.
> 
> The requirements on handling the span element for the bidi algorithm
> may be implemented indirectly through the style layer.
> ]]
> 
> Thanks again for all your time and help!
> 
> Kind regards,
> Marcos
> --
> Marcos Caceres
> http://datadriven.com.au
> 
> 
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Received on Thursday, 4 March 2010 20:51:53 UTC