RE: Alignment of paragraphs with unicode-bidi: plaintext

From: aharon@google.com
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 09:38:59 +0200
To: matial@il.ibm.com
CC: public-i18n-bidi@w3.org; smontagu@smontagu.org; www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: Alignment of paragraphs with unicode-bidi: plaintext

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71194 has been filed about this on WebKit, and there seems to be a consensus that unicode-bidi:plaintext would work better if it affected alignment (when text-align/text-align-last is start or end). There are two possible ways to proceed:


- Change WebKit's behavior as proposed.- Wait for a change in the spec - or at least a sign that such a change is coming.

Fantasai, any guidance?


Aharon
Hmm Aharon, maybe alignment should work off the text/current paragraph's direction only when the paragraph has at least around 100 bytes (64, or maybe 128) or something of substance . . . to make direction worth determining.(Just a thought.)
Best,
--C. E. Whiteheadcewcathar@hotmail.com  
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Aharon (Vladimir) Lanin <aharon@google.com> wrote:


Sounds good.

Fantasai, do you think it can be specified that way in Writing Modes level 3?

Levi, how difficult would it be to implement in WebKit?



Aharon


On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Matitiahu Allouche <matial@il.ibm.com> wrote:



My opinion, for what it's worth, is that
plaintext paragraphs should be aligned in sync with paragraph direction
for "text-align:start", opposite to paragraph direction for "text-align:end",
to absolute right or left for "text-align:right" and "text-align:left"
respectively.

"text-align:center" should
not be a problem.

"text-align:justify" should
not be a problem for lines down to the last one in the paragraph. The last
one should be handled like for "text-align:start".



The advantage of this proposal is that
it provides more readability for common cases when most paragraphs follow
the same direction and span at least a few lines.

For special cases when there are very
short paragraphs with alternate directions, the author can specify "text-align:right"
or "text-align:left", so we get the advantages of both solutions
(Gecko and Chrome).



Shalom (Regards),  Mati

       Bidi Architect

       Globalization Center Of Competency - Bidirectional
Scripts

       IBM Israel

       Mobile: +972 52 2554160









From:      
 "Aharon (Vladimir)
Lanin" <aharon@google.com>

To:      
 Simon Montagu <smontagu@smontagu.org>

Cc:      
 public-i18n-bidi@w3.org,
"www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>

Date:      
 31/10/2011 00:27

Subject:    
   Re: Alignment
of paragraphs with unicode-bidi: plaintext








I can see arguments for either approach being better.
On the one hand, text is more readable aligned to its own start side. On
the other hand,  paragraphs with alternating alignment, especially
when many are less than half a line long, can look "jagged",
and in extreme cases can result in the user not even noticing the paragraphs
aligned to the minority side.



Furthermore, we would need to specify how allowing plaintext
to base alignment on paragraph direction would play with text-align. Is
it supposed to be limited to "text-align:start" and "text-align:end"?



I would very much like to hear what people think about
this.



Aharon




On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Simon Montagu <smontagu@smontagu.org>
wrote:

As far as I can see, there is no explicit specification
in CSS Writing Modes Module Level 3 of what effect "unicode-bidi:
plaintext" should have on the default alignment of paragraphs.



When implementing "unicode-bidi: plaintext" for Gecko, I took
it for granted that each paragraph in the element would determine its directionality
by the heuristic in the UBA, and then determine the start of the line box
depending on the directionality of the paragraph.



I just noticed that recent versions of Chrome behave differently: directionality
is determined for each paragraph separately, but alignment is determined
by the first paragraph in the element, and all subsequent paragraphs get
the same alignment.



As I said, there doesn't seem to be anything in the spec to say which approach
is correct. I think the behaviour in Gecko is more intuitive and useful,
but then I would, wouldn't I? Either way, it is probably worth adding something
to the spec to make it explicit.