RE: per-paragraph auto-direction, a.k.a. dir=uba

Hi.
> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:15:17 -0700
> From: fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net
> To: aharon@google.com
> CC: public-i18n-bidi@w3.org; ehsan@mozilla.com; behdad@behdad.org; adil@diwan.com; shachar@shemesh.biz; addison@lab126.com
> Subject: Re: per-paragraph auto-direction, a.k.a. dir=uba
>
> On 09/14/2010 04:43 PM, Aharon (Vladimir) Lanin wrote:
>>> Browsers have to deal with incremental rendering,
>>> meaning that they start rendering a document before it has completely
>>> loaded. It does not make sense for bidi resolution of a block of text
>>> to change if an element happens to load in later.
>>
>> On the face of it, this seems to make any kind of dir=auto (not just
>> uba) difficult, since the first few descendant nodes received may not
>> contain decisive content.
>
> Right. But it's relatively rare to get tons of content without getting
> any decisive content, whereas it's relatively common to get e.g. a
>
> with inline content that suddenly contains a block-level element.

Hi, I think also that 63 -- as Ehsan and Fantasai have suggested -- is a good value for first strong directionality determination algorithms.
(I do not want values that would make processing a lot of input cumbersome . . . and Ehsan's arguments convinced me.)

Best,

C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com
>
>> So, do we have to get rid of dir=auto or uba completely?
>
> There's likely to be pushback on it due to implementation concerns, but
> since there are solid, common use cases for these features, I don't think
> we should drop them. However, that doesn't mean we should define behavior
> that aggravates the situation.
>
>> And if not, should we resurrect uba for elements with no child elements,
>> not just ?
>
> I object to that idea. It's not just more complex for UAs to have a list
> of special elements that when loaded trigger a reformat, it's also more
> confusing for authors and site visitors to have the sudden, inexplicable
> shift when new content is added.
>
> If there's a strong need for dir=uba on more elements, then we can define
> it to apply only to the direct contents those elements and not to
> descendant content. That's acceptable. It doesn't upset already-rendered
> content. But I don't really see a strong use case for dir=uba behavior
> on anything other than  and <pre>. They are designed to contain<br />> unmarked-up text. Inside anything else, the author is supposed to be<br />> marking up his text, and he may as well use proper s with their own<br />> 'dir' attributes.<br />><br />> If after HTML5 there's a huge demand for more automagic bidi capabilities,<br />> then we can revisit the issue then.<br />><br />> ~fantasai<br />><br /><br />

Received on Monday, 20 September 2010 20:51:59 UTC