[Bug 10807] i18n comment 1 : new attribute: ubi

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10807

Aharon Lanin <aharon.lists.lanin@gmail.com> changed:

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--- Comment #5 from Aharon Lanin <aharon.lists.lanin@gmail.com> 2010-10-09 20:16:25 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #1)
> unicode-bidi takes 5 different values and maybe will take more in the future.
> Currently, I believe two of those are exposed via HTML - the dir="" attribute
> on most elements sets "unicode-bidi: embed" (in addition to setting
> "direction") and the dir="" attribute on the <bdo>element sets "unicode-bidi:
> override" (again in addition to setting "direction").

"Two" is not quite correct. Besides "embed" and "override", the third pre-CSS3
value, "normal", is basically the current default, so it too is already
available. The remaining two values are new to CSS3: "plaintext", which is part
of the dir=auto discussion and belongs there, and "isolate" , which is what the
ubi attribute is meant to expose (not yet another beyond these five). With ubi,
no unicode-bidi values are left unexposed in HTML.

> Perhaps instead of adding
> another boolean attribute for yet another value, it would make more sense to
> add a bidi="" attribute that can express any of the unicode-bidi values. That
> would be more future proof, as we won't have to proliferate attributes if it
> turns out more of these are important to expose to markup.

I don't think the result would have very desirable qualities. Setting
unicode-bidi to "embed" or "override" without giving a new direction value is
not at all a common use-case. That's why the dir attribute, which sets both
unicode-bidi and direction is designed the way it is, and is perfect for the
job. The dir attribute would handle the "plaintext" too. So, all that's left is
the new "isolate" value - and any future ones. It is difficult to say whether
the future ones would be a good fit for the new attribute, or a poor one like
most of the current values. And even isolate does not fit very well with the
new attribute because of the wordiness: unicode-bidi=isolate instead of just
ubi. And wordiness matters here because we expect the new attribute to be used
quite a bit.

I therefore think that ubi as currently designed would work better.

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Received on Saturday, 9 October 2010 20:16:28 UTC