RE: [iri] #121: BIDI: Some users are requiring right-to-left label ordering.

>> (maybe that's what you meant, but in that case, please be
>> careful with terminology)

Yes, sorry.

>>
>> - At http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/iri/trac/ticket/121#comment:7, you
>> wrote about partial web names in all-Arabic on the side of a bus, e.g.
>> CCC.BBB.AAA. In this specific case, the current spec (RFC 3987 and draft-
>> ietf-iri-bidi-guidilines-02.txt) will do the right thing (because the
>> Unicode Bidi algorithm reorders by runs, not by components). In that case,
>> no embedding may be necessary. This is explicitly mentioned:

I actually got confused a bit and reread the specification.  Now I like the behavior even less :)

Our investigation is that the parts of an IRI are treated like a list.  If I have a list like (Afra, Joe, Mary, Maysun, Mohamed, Phil), I'm not going to change the order of the list because of my language, I expect it to stay (AFRA, joe, mary, MAYSUN, MOHAMED, phil), not (AFRA, joe, mary, MOHAMED, MAYSUN, phil).  (Though I confess to mixing metaphors because I used alphabitization to sort my list and clearly in different scripts that'd be different.  I imagine I'm getting the idea across though, maybe it was an org chart that just so happens to have people arranged alphabetically by transliterated Latin name :)).  

Similarly for http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx, it's ordered something like a://b.c.d/e/f.g  -- A list can keep its order rendered as either a://b.c.d/e/f.g or g.f/e/b.c.b//:a   Which is appropriate depends on the situation, but if we start rearranging the order of the labels it gets really confusing.  At that point 99% of the populous would lose all hope of realizing there's an order to an IRI.  (Right now few people could correctly parse one anyway, but it'd get way worse).

IMO, which way the parts are ordered is less important than the fact they're consistently ordered.

-Shawn

Received on Thursday, 29 March 2012 15:11:45 UTC