bidi discussion list was: Bidi Markup vs Unicode control characters

Sandra, yes of course. I am not suggesting CSS be made a requirement for
bidi. Only that it should be acceptable and considered best practice in
the right context.

At the time the standard was written, I took the warning that bidi css
may be ignored by user agents to be a reflection of the state of the art
at the time, since most browsers were not able to support bidi with or
without css.

It had not occurred to me that people were interpreting it to mean that
css implementers would intentionally choose not to support it or that
W3C was endorsing such a view. That would be counter to goals for
internationalization and making the web accessible to all.

(I will have to look around, but I am hard pressed to think of another
instance where the fact that a feature is optional became a
recommendation to not use it. Heck, there are many required features not
implemented or incompletely implemented and we don't offer the same
advice.)
*****
A few people have remarked about their interest in the subject. Would it
make sense to create a discussion list, perhaps the I18n WG would
host/moderate, specific to topics of best practices with bidi on the
web. I would like to see the use cases identified (eg. your gov't
requirements, needs of multilingual web sites, templating, css users,
etc.) and develop solutions within the existing framework, and possibly
make requests for enhancements of the standards.

We could carry on here, but I am not sure the overall community wants
that much commentary on the subject, and also posting to a large list
might intimidate some from posting.
*****

tex

Sandra Bostian wrote:
> 
> For US government agencies, though, this is a section 508 requirement. Your documents must be coherent without the css. And most browsers will let you turn off style sheets and use your own (often used by those with visual disabilities). This may be a case of know your requirements and who your audience is, but certain sectors either can't or should be highly wary of relying solely on css.
> 
> Thank you all for this discussion, by the way. We are looking at a new project using Arabic and this has been highly helpful in clarifying some of the issues.
> 
> Thanks,
> Sandy
> 
> Sandy Bostian
> Digital Conversion Specialist
> Library of Congress
> Meeting of Frontiers: http://frontiers.loc.gov
> 202-707-2342
> sbos@loc.gov
> 
> >>> Tex Texin <tex@xencraft.com> 08/07/05 6:08 PM >>>
> 
> It is not clear to me that we need to insist on the document being
> coherent without css.

-- 
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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 Monday, 8 August 2005 20:14:05 UTC