RE: Shaping characters in upright orientation in vertical text flow

Hi.

To: kojiishi@gluesoft.co.jp
CC: jdaggett@mozilla.com; public-i18n-bidi@w3.org; www-international@w3.org
From: matial@il.ibm.com
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:25:12 +0200
Subject: Re: Shaping characters in upright orientation in vertical text flow

> I am not an Arabic expert, but what I seem
to remember is as follows:



> a) Arabic letters oriented upright should
be in isolated shape



> b) This is a very unseemly sight for
an Arabic reader and authors should avoid this mode of presentation. Arabic
letters rotated 90> degrees counterclockwise so that the text is read from
top to bottom while the letters can be connected is a much better option.


I would tend to agree with Mati that Arabic words/text are/is not for the most part presented with the characters arranged vertically in isolation; the alphabet can be presented this way of course-- I've seeen the latter. 
Best,
--C. E. Whiteheadcewcathar@hotmail.com 
 > Shalom (Regards),  Mati
 >     Bidi Architect
 >     Globalization Center Of Competency - Bidirectional
Scripts
 >     IBM Israel
 >     Mobile: +972 52 2554160









From:      
 Koji Ishii <kojiishi@gluesoft.co.jp>

To:      
 "public-i18n-bidi@w3.org"
<public-i18n-bidi@w3.org>

Cc:      
 "'WWW International'
(www-international@w3.org)" <www-international@w3.org>, John
Daggett <jdaggett@mozilla.com>

Date:      
 17/01/2012 06:26

Subject:    
   Shaping characters
in upright orientation in vertical text flow








Hello, I've got an item that I need your help.



CSS Writing Modes Level 3 has the "text-orientation" property[1].
With that, you can set glyph orientation in vertical text flow.



The issue is about how to render shaping characters when "text-orientation:
upright" is applied. Please scroll down the spec a little bit to see
"Figure 12. 'text-orientation' values"; "upright" is
the one I'm talking about. You see all characters including Latin are upright
in this style.



How do you expect shaping characters look in this case?



Currently, the spec states "Shaping characters from such scripts are
shaped in their isolated forms." This is primarily from fantasai's
investigations.



Another source to support this behavior is how Excel renders its vertical
text flow[2].



There're other options such as "always keep them sideways (i.e., rotated
by 90 degrees.)" This is the behavior usually done by using "text-orientation:
sideways-right"[1] (see Figure 12 for examples,) but I understand
there're some scripts that can never be written in upright and therefore
renders the same way as "sideways-right" even when author applied
"upright".



I personally have no idea which one is the right behavior here.



John Daggett in his recent mail pointed out that[3]:

> For 'upright' the spec currently states "Shaping characters from

> such scripts are shaped in their isolated forms." This means
that

> 'upright' applied to Arabic in vertical text would break the shaping.

> I'm really not sure that this is the right behavior, I think this
behavior

> is why Microsoft was talking about making an alternate proposal for

> UTR50.



Could anyone give us your opinions on this? Thank you for your support
in advance.



[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-writing-modes/#text-orientation

[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2012Jan/att-0010/upright-excel.png

[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2012Jan/0655.html



Regards,

Koji