Re: RTL Directionality use case #19 added

Hi Jeni,

thanks, I was the one nagging about this:-)

On 08 May 2014, at 16:47 , Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I was tasked with adding something about RTL directionality based on use case #19.
> 
> I’ve put something into the Model document here:
> 
>   http://w3c.github.io/csvw/syntax/#bidirectionality-in-csv-files
> 
> Comments welcome.

Well... I am not sure the algorithm you describe will work easily in practice, at least for the table directionality...

- Retrieving the directionality may be fairly complex task for a user level. I must admit I am not sure how I would do that, say, in Python from the top of my head (I say Python because that is the programming language I am most familiar with)

- Just as HTML needs its own tags to handle bidi, don't we incur the danger to run into similar problems? What if the some of the headers and, to be really unlucky, both the rightmost and the leftmost, are a left-to-right text (eg, mixing English and Hebrew headers)? The algorithm might believe that the table is a LTR one, although it is, in fact, a RTL one, or vice versa 

Bottomline: I believe we need to add a separate flag in section 5 to indicate directionality, the same way as directionality may be set explicitly for an HTML file. This should have the highest priority on setting the table directionality

B.t.w., there may be a number of rows that are to be skipped. I presume those should not come into play for the table directionality.

Thanks!

Ivan

P.S. We may want to ask the advise of somebody in the I18N community. Should I ask either Felix or Richard, our two international guys in the team? Or should we send an official note to the I18N WG? The latter is probably the best approach.


> 
> Jeni
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> From: Ivan Herman ivan@w3.org
> Reply: Ivan Herman ivan@w3.org
> Date: 6 May 2014 at 08:20:29
> To: Eric Stephan ericphb@gmail.com
> Cc: Jeremy Tandy jeremy.tandy@metoffice.gov.uk, Ceolin, D. d.ceolin@vu.nl, Yakov Shafranovich yakov-ietf@shaftek.org, W3C CSV on the Web Working Group public-csv-wg@w3.org
> Subject:  Re: RTL Directionality use case #19 added
> 
>> Oops, sorry, I read the other mail first and I put my comment onto that one:-( Just for the  
>> records:
>> 
>> I believe that use case should also lead to a separate requirement, something like any  
>> parser should be informed about RTL and retrieve the headers accordingly for the CSV+.  
>> 
>> Ivan
>> 
>> On 06 May 2014, at 05:54 , Eric Stephan wrote:
>> 
>>> I've made an attempt at the use case for the RTL directionality and
>>> checked in the edits in github.
>>> http://w3c.github.io/csvw/use-cases-and-requirements/index.html
>>> 
>>> What is still missing, is incorrect, and needs to be changed?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> Eric Stephan
>> 
>> 
>> ----
>> Ivan Herman, W3C
>> Digital Publishing Activity Lead
>> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
>> mobile: +31-641044153
>> GPG: 0x343F1A3D
>> WebID: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf#me
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> --  
> Jeni Tennison
> http://www.jenitennison.com/


----
Ivan Herman, W3C 
Digital Publishing Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
GPG: 0x343F1A3D
WebID: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf#me