Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML - open issues

Hi.  Since you  posted the nice summary of issues (thanks very much to Aharon for this),
I will offer my votes on some of the issues posted that particularly interested me (sorry; I've been sort of ill, and did not take that much time with this).
From: Aharon (Vladimir) Lanin <aharon@google.com> 
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 19:01:46 +0300

>  Instead of bdi=yes element acting on what surrounds it as strongly in the
> base direction, should its effect on the surrounding text be neutral? This
> is cleaner and safer, could make it possible to apply bdi=yes automatically
> to <a> elements, and be useful for display:inline-block (see 3.3 below).
> However, it may be significantly more difficult to implement, and would
> require a different solution for <br> (3.1), since it would no longer have
> any effect there. Should both behaviors be available and specifiable?
Both behaviors should be allowed for; that is what I would vote for here.
Definitely the default for <br> elements should allow for the possibility that the directionality of text following the element might or might not be the same as the directionality of text preceding the element.
But I think that all <a> elements should be by default bidi isolates, but yes this should not necessarily effect the closing of embedding levels of surrounding text (I am not sure, is that what you mean?  or do you mean change directionality?  it should not do so if it is an isolate) -- so in this case bdi='yes' should have a neutral effect on surrounding text; 
so I agree with those who say it's necessary to support both behaviors.
* * *
As for determining directionality automatically, I think there was some consensus for (and, so long as the number of words/characters tested is part of the source code, I am leaning toward):
> - auto[0-9]*, specifying a limit on the number of strongly-directional words
> scanned. auto1 is thus equivalent to first-strong and auto99 to word-count.

 

I don't know what a word is always though and it might be better to specify the character count but I think that auto[0-9] is the format pretty much agreed on (I thought so; correct me).
> Just "auto" - TBD.
(see http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-bidi/2010JanMar/0029.html 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-bidi/2010JanMar/0025.html )
* * *
I think the browser makers and their friends are saying that, in addition to language selectors, there will now be directionality selectors in css,
and that browser makers envision allowing images to be selected according to document directionality and styling to be applied according to image directionality, using the directionality psuedo-class selectors -- hope I've understood this correctly --
(see http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-bidi/2010AprJun/0024.html;
thus I am assuming they will all get together and make these selectors work properly in all browsers -- unlike the target pseudo-class -- so I will let them handle this)
> c. Mirroring the image is not always sufficient; two different images are
> sometimes necessary, and this case should not require two versions of the
> HTML. So, allow specifying two urls: one for ltr and one for rtl? Suggested
> syntax: rtlflip  (%URI;|rtlflip|none) # none. Note that this conflicts with
> b.
> d. Specify CSS equivalent usable with background.
O.k. I guess.
* * *
3.1 Again I think <br> should serve as a bidi separator  I do not have comments about the rest of this 
* * *
3.4 b
> b. Recommend adding an optional dir parameter to Javascript's alert(),
> confirm(), and prompt(), and recommend a similar change in all other script
> languages / APIs?
Yes I think, and auto directionality might be another option too
* * *
3.6 c
> c. Add altdir attribute? Not really necessary on <img>, since dir on <img>
> has no effect except on alt and title, but that is not the case for <input>.
> What about longdesc?
I am wondering if you now have consensus on whether or whether not to have altdir?
(the following is from: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-bidi/2010AprJun/0025.html
> > *** The workaround suggested for title on an outer element doesn't work on
> > an alt. on the other hand, you don't really need that workaround since you
> > can put the alt direction in the dir attribute, which has on other use on an
> > image.  we agree that it would be clearest to have altdir and titledir.)
I am undecided as to whether to have an altdir or simply an imgdir and a titledir. 
* * *
> 3.10 . . . 
> a. In some Arabic usage, bullet side being determined by item direction
> appears to be preferred. Furthermore, CSS WG objects to this change because
> all browsers in principle currently follow the item's direction.
> Suggested resolution: add CSS property to determine the behavior.
Yes this is a good solution.
Best,
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com