For review: Proposals for changing dir behaviour in HTML5

Unicode 6.3 will shortly be released, and will contain new control codes 
(RLI, LRI, FSI, PDI) to enable authors to express isolation at the same 
time as direction in inline bidirectional text.

The Unicode Consortium recommends that isolation be used as the default 
for all future inline bidirectional text embeddings.

The CSS Writing Modes specification has already been adapted to 
accommodate this new development. We now need to ensure that HTML5 
enables content authors to apply isolation as the default whenever they 
set direction on inline content.

After significant amounts of discussion and many revisions, the i18n WG 
wants to make the following recommendations to the HTML WG:

http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Html-bidi-isolation

After much deliberation, we concluded that, although not perfect, 
changing the semantics of the existing dir attribute (ie. using the same 
values), would be by far the least problematic solution.

We are offering people on these lists a chance to review the document 
before we recommend that change to the HTML WG. Please cc both lists in 
any replies. Apologies for any cross-posting, but we want to ensure that 
this is seen by the union of people on the two lists.

We need to make the proposals to the HTML WG as soon as possible, so we 
ask you to send comments, if you have any, by the end of this week.

Cheers,
RI




-- 
Richard Ishida, W3C
http://rishida.net/

Received on Tuesday, 23 April 2013 15:36:21 UTC