Re: dir=auto makes no sense for descendant user-visible attributes

Thanks, Najib, for summarizing above.

I have come around to Mati's view.

Here is a formulation that works the way Mati wants it but also avoids the
bdi issue. It also makes use of the concept of element directionality whose
inheritance (as opposed to the inheritance of the dir attribute) is defined
in the HTML5 spec (
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-dir-attribute):

A new attribute, attribsdir="ltr|rtl|auto", is proposed which
would determine the directionality in which an element's attributes (for
example title, alt and placeholder) must appear when displayed to the user:

 * attribsdir="ltr": the directionality of the element's attributes is 'ltr'
 * attribsdir="rtl": the directionality of the element's attributes is 'rtl'
 * attribsdir = "auto": the directionality of each of the element's
attributes must be computed independently from the attribute's value. If an
attribute's value contains a character of bidirectional character type AL
or R, and there is no character of bidirectional character type L anywhere
before it in the attribute's value, then the directionality of the
attribute is 'rtl'. Otherwise, the directionality of the attribute is 'ltr'.
 * attribsdir not specified:
    o If the element has dir=auto (explicitly or by default, as is the case
for the bdi element), or if the element inherits its directionality from
such an element, then the directionality of each of the element's
attributes is computed independently from the attribute's value, as for
attribsdir="auto".
    o Otherwise, the directionality of the element's attributes is the same
as the element's directionality.

I intend to file a bug on HTML5 with that wording (after explaining the
current problems). If anyone sees a problem, please respond ASAP.

Aharon