[Bug 10815] New: i18n comment 10 : block elements with display:inline should get ubi instead of default dir

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10815

           Summary: i18n comment 10 : block elements with display:inline
                    should get ubi instead of default dir
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows XP
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: public-i18n-bidi@w3.org
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org, public-i18n-bidi@w3.org


Comment from the i18n review of:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/

Comment 10
At http://www.w3.org/International/reviews/html5-bidi/
Editorial/substantive: S
Tracked by: AL

Location in reviewed document:
undefined [http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/spec.html#contents]

Comment:This is a part of the proposals made by the "Additional Requirements
for Bidi in HTML" W3C First Public Working Draft. For a full description of the
use cases, please see 
http://www.w3.org/International/docs/html-bidi-requirements/#blocks-as-separators
[http://www.w3.org/International/docs/html-bidi-requirements/#blocks-as-separators]
. Here is the proposal made there:

At one time, all browsers treated block elements that have been given
display:inline in CSS as an ordinary inline element for bidi purposes, (i.e.
gave no special treatment). One use case for using display:inline on block
elements is getting an inline auto-numbered list with <ol style
"display:inline">. To get bidi treatment of such use cases, HTML 4 explicitly
specified (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/dirlang.html#style-bidi):
"When a block element that does not have a dir attribute is transformed to the
style of an inline element by a style sheet, the resulting presentation should
be equivalent, in terms of bidirectional formatting, to the formatting obtained
by explicitly adding a dir attribute (assigned the inherited value) to the
transformed element". The intent was to prevent the bidi ordering within such
an element from being affected by the element's surroundings, as it would not
be affected if it still had block display. To date, the only browser to
implement this specification is Firefox.

Unfortunately, this condition does not go far enough, since adding a dir
attribute to an inline element does not prevent it from affecting the bidi
ordering of its surroundings in ways that a separate block would not.

A separate bug defining the ubi attribute specifies that the default ubi
attribute value for a block element with display:inline shall be "ubi",
isolating the element directionally from its surroundings. This is meant as an
improvement on the condition mentioned above. Thus, the condition above should
be removed from the HTML specification.

A nice side-effect of this change is that when display:inline block element is
explicitly given ubi=off, it will be displayed the way it had been before this
condition was added to the HTML specification and the way it is currently
displayed in all major browsers except Firefox.

These changes do not present a problem for backward compatibility because the
HTML 4 specification was never implemented in this respect by most browsers.

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Received on Wednesday, 29 September 2010 12:44:22 UTC