[minutes] Arabic layout telecon 2017-01-17

https://www.w3.org/2017/01/17-alreq-minutes.html


ALReq Weekly Meeting, 17 January 2017

17 Jan 2017

    See also: [2]IRC log

       [2] http://www.w3.org/2017/01/17-alreq-irc

Attendees

    Present
           behnam, mostafa, najib, r12a

    Regrets
           shervin

    Chair
           Behnam

    Scribe
           mostafa

Contents

      * [3]Topics
      * [4]Summary of Action Items
      * [5]Summary of Resolutions
      __________________________________________________________

    <behnam> [6]https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/57

       [6] https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/57

    Behnam: Najib has something for the discussion of justification

    <behnam> Google Drive folder of images from Najib:
    [7]https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4AzjidUPzvZQUl1QnJa
    ZDF5dFU

       [7] 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4AzjidUPzvZQUl1QnJaZDF5dFU

    Najib: These images are from some old books from libraries in
    @@@.
    ... These are some examples of justification.
    ... You wish to not justify verses in lines in paragraph.
    ... It is not possible to do with CSS.
    ... Now it justifies the whole paragraph.

    <najib> Do you think it is a desirable property to not justify
    a part of a paragraph

    <najib> inline part

    Mostafa: The whole idea seems strange to me. Because a main
    goal in justification is to keep the look of the lines similar.
    ... To avoid too much space or kashida in one place and less in
    other places.
    ... This suggestion is against that goal.

    Najib: Generally, a quote from Quran is set in a different
    style that the rest of the text.
    ... And generally they don’t apply justification to that.

    Behnam: What happens when a quote spans multiple lines,
    including lines that only include that Quran quote?

    Najib: We should consult the books that do this for this
    question.
    ... It is very popular in books that talk about Quran. There
    are many examples of this.

    Richard: In the example with the red extract, I’m not sure but
    it seems like there is some spacing applied, even though it is
    very small.
    ... And in other examples they have some justifications for the
    verses in the forms of elongation or alternative forms.

    Mostafa: What makes it harder is that a different font is used
    for these quotes.
    ... So these changes may just be a side effect of that.
    ... It makes it harder to extract the intetion of the designer.
    ... But if that’s a deliberate choice by designers to limit
    justification in quotes, we have to mention it as something
    that is used in some contexts.

    Behnam: About mentioning that we need to say something about it
    or not, we need more examples to find a pattern and make a
    decision about it.

    Najib: Maybe this is for emphasis.
    ... I saw another example (not in the images) where terms were
    in a specific style and their definitions in another style.

    Behnam: I agree that this is a kind of emphasis. But the
    question is are there any general that can define these common
    practices?

    Najib: We can have this discussion when we have more example
    and information on this.

    Behnam: +1

    Richard: In my mind, the way to apply these limitations in
    Arabic would be like it is applied in InDesign: you select a
    range of text and apply different spacings and values for that
    range.
    ... Unlike in English where you apply the same setting
    regardless of text and font.
    ... In Arabic we have much more tools for use here. So they can
    be used with more control.

    Behnam: I agree with wath Richard said. But I think we require
    more examples of this.

    Richard: For browsers we will need to apply justification
    settings to bits of texts in paragraphs.
    ... I guess we will end of with having some properties for
    Arabic in CSS.

    Najib: In CSS I’ve seen two properties: text-align and justify.
    “justify” is a new one.
    ... For “justify” we can select different justification
    methods.

    Richard: The naming of these properties is confusing. The
    “justify” is mainly added for far east justification methods.
    ... We might want something to define spacing and other
    justification methods.

    <najib> +1 to Richard for some properties for Arabic in CSS.

    Mostafa: The way I see is that there are many more tools for
    justification for Arabic than in Latin.
    ... Obviously, the first step is for the browsers to recognize
    and use these methods for Arabic justification.
    ... And ideally the next step is to have CSS properties to
    control these justification methods.

    <najib> +1

    Najib: Some images are about poems. A lot of tatweel is used in
    their justification.
    ... Such justification in normal paragraphs is not desirable
    but it is possible in poems.

    Behnam: In one of the images three lines of poems are shorter
    than the next two. Do you know why is that?

    Najib: It is a music poem and the music in first three lines
    differs with the music of the next two lines.
    ... That’s a style of writing.
    ... In one of the images the last line looks unbalanced,
    because they rest of the lines have tatweel for justification
    and the last line does not.
    ... I guess the same justification should be applied to the
    last line of the paragraph to make it look like the rest of the
    paragraph.

    Mostafa: Even if we do that we will still have difference
    situation and justification in the next paragraph. Also,
    usually justification is applied line by line, not the whole
    paragraphs.

    <najib> Is it right to have a requirement that the last line
    should be "spaced" or "tatweeled" the same way as the rest of
    the paragraph?

    Mostafa: We can progress on this if we find examples in real
    world.

    Najib: Examples from the books are all good.
    ... The problem only happens in digital tools.

    <behnam> Action Najib to collect more examples for
    Justification rules and patterns

    <trackbot> Created ACTION-81 - Collect more examples for
    justification rules and patterns [on Najib Tounsi - due
    2017-01-24].

    <behnam> Action Behnam to collect more examples for
    Justification rules and patterns

    <trackbot> Created ACTION-82 - Collect more examples for
    justification rules and patterns [on Behnam Esfahbod - due
    2017-01-24].

    Behnam: Richard discussed the idea of having the word “script”
    in the title.

    Richard: I brought it up because some people were confused by
    our title and asked us to make it more clear.
    ... We have the same situation with the Chinese document.
    ... People didn’t realise that we cover Persian as well.

    Behnam: Changing the title to “Requirements for Arabic Text
    Layout” does not solve the problem then.

    <najib>
    [8]https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/88#issuecomment-27248595
    5

       [8] https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/88#issuecomment-272485955

    Behnam: Shervin had some comment on this issue. Maybe we should
    wait for him to hear his comment.

    <najib>
    s/[9]https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/88#issuecomment-272485
    955//

       [9] https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/88#issuecomment-272485955//

    Richard: On a side note, instead of leaving a “+1” comment we
    should use Emoji reactions.

    Mostafa: I don’t care about which wording we chose, so if the
    current title is confusing, I agree with adding the “script”
    word. I read Shervin’s comment saying that it is clear in the
    text, but there is no problem with being clear in the title
    too.
    ... But like Behnam said, we might want to hear Shervin’s idea
    as well.

    Behnam: I left a comment for Shervin to hear his idea about why
    suggesting to use “Arabic Text” instead of “Arabic Script”.

    <behnam> [10]https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues

      [10] https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues

    <behnam>
    [11]https://www.w3.org/International/groups/arabic-layout/track
    /actions/open

      [11] 
https://www.w3.org/International/groups/arabic-layout/track/actions/open

    <behnam>
    [12]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarnegar_(word_processor)

      [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarnegar_(word_processor)

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

    [End of minutes]

Received on Wednesday, 18 January 2017 12:37:17 UTC