RE: Comments on Best Practices for Authoring HTML: RTL scripts

Hi.
 
My remaining comments on 
http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-bidi/
 
are on content.  All of these comments are on pretty minor issues though.  

CONTENT:
 
Section 4  Best Practice 1
(Just a note you can ignore:  for css-illiterate browsers the deprecated html p align= is still the way to make things display correctly.
 
And so I do prefer to use both css and the deprecated html together personally.  But this is a personal preference, and I do write some terribly 'robust' code [I mean robust for the browsers] maybe to the extent that I know what I am doing; I doubt that it is recommended to write code as I often do.)
 
* * *
 
Section 4  Best Practice 2
 
" By default the dir attribute setting should produce the correct alignment" 


However, see the attached html page! 
(& sorry for this cumbersome phonetic transcription of Arabic [which may have an error or two] and this leaden morpheme-by-morpheme translation [in which I hope there are no errors]; I just used code from a page I had available; I did not feel like typing in more unicode character numbers at this time; 
regarding the alignment of the first six verses/half-verses, 
the following codes produce the following effects:
p align="right" class="ArabicOriginal" Displays o.k. with text rtl
p align="left" class="ArabicOriginal" aligns to the left as expected; text runs rtl as it should
p class="ArabicOriginal" dir="rtl" still aligns to the left 
p align="right" aligns to the right; margin is off because I specify a margin with the class attribute!
p align="right" class="ArabicOriginal" dir="rtl"aligns properly to the right
p class="ArabicOriginal" dir="rtl" even coming in the middle of right-aligned paragraphs, it aligns to the left--and this with the directionality attribute set [which is wholly unneeded here since the whole block is in Arabic script!])

 

I'm sure I've misunderstood here; please let me know how I've misunderstood Best Practice 2.



Also I've found that users can apparently sometimes control default text alignment--resetting it to center, for an example.  Paragraphs on an html page may look odd centered in my opinion at least--and thus I always specify the text-alignment--but again this is more about my personal preferences than about what your best practices should be.
 
* * *
 
5  Best Practice 3
Mati noted: 
M.A.]
> 31) In the note for "Setting up a right-to-left page", IE v6-8, we find: "
> In Internet Explorer, applying a right-to-left direction in the html or 
> body tag will affect the user interface, too. If the page has a scroll 
> bar, it will appear on the left side of the window. JavaScript alert boxes 
> will be mirror imaged."
> As far as I remember, this is true for dir applied to the HTML tag, not 
> for the BODY tag, at least up to IE v7. Please check.
> If I am right, then "they may prefer to not declare the document 
> directionality on the html or body tag" => "they may prefer to not declare 
> the document directionality on the html tag."
> If I am correct, there is no need for a div element immediately inside the 
> BODY tag, it is enough to specify dir on the BODY tag.
> I have no experience with IE v8. If the results are different for IE v8, 
> then I suggest to add that the proposed solution (div within Body) is more 
> than needed for IE versions until v7 but provides a unified solution for 
> all IE versions including v8.

I myself feel that setting directionality for the body element might be useful in cases where the title of the document is in English but the page content is in Arabic (such as an Arabic poem in the Arabic language for English speakers???). 
 
 
 
 
* * *
 



--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com 
 

 


















From: cewcathar@hotmail.com
To: ishida@w3.org; www-international@w3.org
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:28:59 -0400
Subject: RE: Comments on Best Practices for Authoring HTML: RTL scripts



Hi.
 
I've so far got a few comments on the English grammar and punctuation in the introductory part and section 1 -- if you are taking those at this point (I've read through section 3 only however).
 
"Status of this Document" 
par 2, last sentence
{COMMENT:  INSERT "in"}
 
". . . fragments of text these scripts"
>
". . . fragments of text in these scripts"
 
* * *
"Introduction"
1.1 par 1, first 'sentence'
". . . localized to a language . . . "
 
{COMMENT:  ??I guess that's o.k.  (I want to say "localized in a language" but o.k. I think your terminology is right; I don't use the 'jargon' yet.)}
 
* * *
1.2.1 par 1, third sentence
 
{COMMENT:  change "they" to "the" and delete either "see" or "read"}
 
" . . . they way you see read . . . "
 
>
 
 
" . . . the way you see [or  "read"--but not both] . . . " 
 
* * *
1.2.3 last paragraph
 
{COMMENT:  I'd put commas around the name of the link}
 
>
". . . follow the link, 'Check for browser-specific notes,' after each best practice."
 
* * *
1.4 "inline element," 2nd sentence
 
{COMMENT:  change first "block" to "inline"}
 
"The opposite of a block element . . . "
 
>
 
"The opposite of an inline element . . . "
 
* * *
 
 
One comment on the content
 
2.2 Can you mention here that the relationship is between the script and directionalit??  It's sort of understood but . . .
 
Thanks,
 
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com 

 
> From: ishida@w3.org
> To: ms2ger@gmail.com
> CC: www-international@w3.org
> Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:32:56 +0100
> Subject: RE: Comments on Best Practices for Authoring HTML: RTL scripts
> 
> Thanks for this useful feedback. Notes below...
> 
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> Internationalization Lead
> W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
> 
> http://www.w3.org/International/
> http://rishida.net/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-international-request@w3.org [mailto:www-international-
> > request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Ms2ger
> > Sent: 15 July 2009 18:52
> > To: www-international@w3.org
> > Subject: Comments on Best Practices for Authoring HTML: RTL scripts
> > 
> > Dear
> > 
> > I have a few comments on the /Best Practices for Authoring HTML:
> > Handling Right-to-left Scripts/ Working Draft of 14 July 2009. [1]
> > 
> > BP 1, Examples 6 and 7: I find it unfortunate that the presentational id
> > |rightjustified| and class |clearleft| are suggested as "best practice".
> > It would be better to suggest picking ids and classes based on the
> > meaning of the markup, rather than the (at this time) preferred
> > presentation. (See [2] for example.)
> 
> I totally agree that semantic names should be chosen for class names whenever possible. I think this will mean creating more complicated examples, but I will do so. You're right that the over-simplistic examples currently used are not good.
> 
> > 
> > BP 3, Example 8:
> > 
> > > <html dir="rtl" lang="ar" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
> > 
> > As this looks like an XHTML document, I believe the attribute
> > |xml:lang=""| would be more appropriate.
> 
> Ah, thanks for drawing my attention to that. I converted the visible example text to HTML from the original XHTML before publishing, and I forgot to remove the xmlns in this example. I'll remove it.
> 
> > 
> > BP 6, Example 9:
> > 
> > > <blockquote dir="ltr" lang="en" cite="Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)">But,
> > soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the
> > sun.</blockquote>
> > 
> > This snippet is incorrect HTML for two reasons: it uses |cite=""|
> > incorrectly—the value should be a URI, and the contents of a
> > /block/quote must be blocks. A more correct version would be
> > 
> > > <blockquote dir="ltr" lang="en"><p>But, soft! What light through yonder
> > window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.</p></blockquote>
> > 
> 
> You're right. I'll change it.
> 
> 
> 
> > Hoping these comments will help to improve the draft
> 
> Very useful. Thanks!
> 
> RI
> 
> 
> > Ms2ger
> > 
> > [1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-i18n-html-tech-bidi-20090714/>
> > [2] <http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/goodclassnames>
> 
> 
>