[Bug 10808] text with unknown direction gets corrupted when inserted in content with opposite direction

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10808

--- Comment #38 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> 2010-11-05 07:11:12 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #37)
> When you say dir="" here and in the other items below [...]

I mean "the 'dir' attribute".


> What do you mean by "logical" direction?

A poor choice of words. I mean the semantic direction, as opposed to the
direction used for rendering (which can be overridden by CSS).


> 1. The "certain other elements" include those that specify a dir value of their
> own, whatever it may be, including "auto", right?

I guess they could... why would they?


> 2. For dir="auto", unicode-bidi should get set to "plaintext" for textarea and
> pre elements, and to "isolate" for everything else.

Fair enough.

I sure hope nobody looks at the CSS specs we're officially referencing and
complains that all these features (':ltr', 'isolate', etc) don't exist yet.


> It's probably best not to use the term "inherit". "<span
> dir=rtl>...<span>...</span>...</span>" is very different from "<span
> dir=rtl>...<span dir=rtl>...</span>...</span>".

The difference is unrelated to the direction. It's only different because the
presence of the dir="" attribute implies unicode-bidi:embed. That would not
change; we're only discussing changing the direction here.


> >  - add an example to the dir="" section of an IM conversation where dir="auto"
> > would help (I'll need help with this since I don't speak any RTL languages).
> 
> Sure. Supply the basic gist, and I'll get you a translation.

Cool, I'll send you a mail when I get to that bit.


> It is also very important to tell people not to expect miracles from dir=auto.
> When applied to an element containing text mixing LTR and RTL characters, its
> results may not always be correct as judged by a human user. It should be used
> primarily on elements tightly wrapping a potentially opposite-direction piece
> of textual content, without admixtures of any kind. It will not "unmix" a
> jumble of LTR and RTL content that has already been mixed together without
> indicating the boundaries. 

If you have any suggestion for a formal note or warning to add to the spec I'd
be happy to add such a warning near the definition of the "auto" value. Ideally
a note that doesn't use colloquialisms like "unmix" or "jumble". :-)

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Received on Friday, 5 November 2010 07:11:16 UTC