Re: [alreq] Changes to structure and revision of section on Arabic manuscript practice (#208)

Thanks for submitting this!  I agree with @shervinafshar that it's risky to include so much in one PR, especially without prior discussion. Thanks very much for putting so much thought and effort into it, though. ;-) 

For me, all the text up to the end of your section 2.3 is a big improvement.  I have a few niggles, which i'll comment inline.  The reorganisation that follows, however, misses some of the intent we had for the document: basically, we had designed the document so that a kind of watershed appears between the old sections 2 and 3.  Section 2 was essentially background information to help the reader grasp the basics about how the script works.  Section 3ff were to be dedicated to technical requirements for people interested in implementing aspects of the typographic features important to Arabic support.  The main idea was to be able to direct the reader quickly to practical advice about requirements for features they were planning to add to the Web platform, and separate out from that the more hand-wavy and less specific background information about how the script works (in general terms).

I'm not adamantly opposed to changing the current structure, but i think such restructuring needs to take into account or provide arguments to dismiss the previous point, and should also consider the feasibility of structuring closer to the categories in the Language Enablement Index at https://w3c.github.io/typography/.  (I just updated this in the past few days with, taking into account lessons learned over the past year while working with a wide range of languages.)

Perhaps this would work as a way forward: split the PR into two. 
- The first PR would contain the stuff up to the end of your new section 2.  I think we could accept that quickly. Perhaps though we should give section 2 a working title such as 'Arabic Script Background' for now, so that it doesn't clash with what would remain as the title of section 3.
- The second PR could propose an alternative structure for the document, which we could think through and discuss (and perhaps submit alternative PRs for).  It may be useful to have a telecon discussion to tie up the loose ends.

How does that sound?


Oh, one more thing about the structure.  The Languages section (your 2.2) was initially in the Introduction because it describes and defines the scope of the document. It wasn't intended to be a review of languages that use the Arabic script or part of the overview of the Arabic script.  I'm somewhat inclined to move it back there...
 

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Received on Tuesday, 14 January 2020 16:05:34 UTC