Re: Shaping characters in upright orientation in vertical text flow

On 2012/01/19 11:25, John Daggett wrote:
> There are several other values which are used to set the orientation
> explicitly.
>
>    text-orientation: upright;
>    text-orientation: sideways;
>    text-orientation: sideways-right;
>    text-orientation: sideways-left;
>
> The 'upright' value is intended to always set characters
> upright and the 'sideways-xxx' values are intended to set characters
> sideways.  For Latin text, using 'upright' will explicitly specify
> that characters are display upright, as in a vertical sign or a book
> spine.  But the ripple here, is that for Arabic nobody is quite
> sure that showing isolated forms upright really makes sense.
>
> I think the real question for the folks in the internationalization
> group is whether there are existing traditions for vertical display of
> Arabic, in signage or otherwise that would give us some guidance here.
> To me, using isolated forms seems somewhat nonsensical but if it
> reflects a widespread tradition we should respect it.

I think from what we have heard until now, it does NOT reflect a 
widespread tradition. However, in case we decide that
    text-orientation: upright;
means "but for Arabic,.., it's sidewise nevertheless", then how would 
one actually display Arabic characters upright if one wanted? Such a 
need may raise not because it's a "widespread tradition", but e.g. to 
set single characters upright when talking about single characters.

In Japanese, there is the pragmatic tradition to set longer text 
sidewise, but single letters or just a few letters upright. The later is 
called tate-chu-yoko (see 
http://www.w3.org/TR/jlreq/#en-subheading2_2_5) in Japanese typography. 
It may be that we can say that in these cases the style mechanism for 
tate-chu-yoko (if there is one) should be used.

Regards,    Martin.

Received on Thursday, 19 January 2012 10:25:49 UTC