[Bug 24129] New: [WebVTT] Support for bidi

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=24129

            Bug ID: 24129
           Summary: [WebVTT] Support for bidi
           Product: TextTracks CG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: WebVTT
          Assignee: silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com
          Reporter: ishida@w3.org
        QA Contact: dave.null@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-texttracks@w3.org

If I understand correctly, the spec at http://dev.w3.org/html5/webvtt/ dated 14
November 2013 relies on the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm's first strong
character heuristic to determine the ltr/rtl base direction for a paragraph,
and has no way of modifying that base direction where needed.

This method of detecting direction can sometimes yield undesirable results, and
it would be good to have a way of overriding it, where necessary.

In addition, it may be necessary to provide directional disambiguation inline
to obtain expected results in bidi situations. To see examples of why this is
necessary, and how it is done in HTML, see
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/update

Could we include directional controls in VTT to enable easier use for those who
use Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, etc scripts?

Unicode control characters could be used, but they sometimes cause problems due
to the fact that they are invisible, and the recommended new isolating control
characters are not yet supported by browsers, so something like an optional tag
may be preferable. (This also has the added advantage that it can help avoid
problems during the transition period and for older browsers when support for
the newly introduced isolating control characters is not yet enabled. Styles
can be associated with tags already to produce isolation rather than embeddings
in the major browsers, and other browsers can support embedding as a fallback.)

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.

Received on Wednesday, 18 December 2013 14:15:05 UTC