Re: Bidi space Q&A

Hi,

Some thoughts on the bidi space question-

1) I see the CSS draft has picked up the drawings from our question. They use
boxes with different borders (e.g. dotted) so they are distinguished by more
than color. We should probably do the same for accessibility reasons.

2) At the end of their text they say:

"Note that there are two spaces between A and B, and none between B and C.
This is best avoided by using the natural bidirectionality of characters
instead of explicit embedding levels."

Can someone explain this to me? I understand that neutral-directionality
characters in between strong characters inherit their direction. However, with
css, direction is either ltr, rtl, or inherited. So if I have an element it
will have some direction. I don't have a way to say direction=none, or
"continue the direction of the elements on either side of me."
Simply inserting a span into a string might change its direction explicitly or
according to its parent's direction.
Maybe I misunderstand this?

3) Just an aside, I think we need to tell the CSS folks to say that
unicode-bidi has to be normal for their spec to be precise. We didn't need to
say it because we ruled out CSS from the question.

4) With respect to embedding levels, the last part of the technical detail
section, the levels are right only if A, B, and C are characters of the same
direction as the element they are in. It's a reasonable assumption, but
perhaps we should make it explicit. For example, if B were an LTR character,
the levels would be 12321.
Some people may mistakenly believe that setting an elements direction somehow
sets the direction of all of its contents rather than just the neutral
characters.
(Maybe that's a good suggestion for another question. "Why does setting
direction only affect some characters?")

tex




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Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
                         
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Received on Saturday, 5 July 2003 02:37:36 UTC