Comments on Bidi Overview document

Comments on document  <http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/new-bidi-xhtml/Overview-inline-2.en.php> http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/new-bidi-xhtml/Overview-inline-2.en.php

 

1)      In section “how the bidi algorithm works”, the subsection “Base direction (direction of the context)” specifies how to implement direction in  HTML elements, while this is supposed to be addressed in section “Handling inline bidirectional text in HTML” according to the box starting “If you are in a hurry”.
There are other HTML references in other paragraphs of this section. IMHO, this section dedicated to the bidi algorithm should stay with general bidi concepts, not modalities of a specific implementation.



2)      In subsection “Neutral characters”, the paragraph starting with “A neutral character between” leaves a doubt about what would happen to 2 or more neutrals bracketed between two strongly typed characters. I suggest to replace by “One or more neutral characters between”.
The occurrence of several neutral characters is mentioned in the paragraph starting “Even if there are several neutral characters”, but this is a bit late for my taste.



3)      In subsection “Embedding changes to the base direction”, I suggest to modify the example saying “The title is !xxx in Arabic” so that the Arabic title is put between double quotes, as follows:
   The title is “!xxx” in Arabic.
This will allow to explain the distinction between the closing double quote which is part of the English context and the exclamation mark which is part of the Arabic phrase.



4)      In the same subsection, in the example starting with “The translation is”,  persons who do not read Arabic cannot judge why the rendering should be as specified. I suggest to first present a pure English version of the example, then the translated version.



5)  In subsection “Numbers”, the example shows that there are 2 directional runs. I think that it would be more correct to show 4 directional runs, since the number is a LTR run which breaks the Arabic words into 2 separate RTL runs.
Alternatively, you could add a line below the line with the 2 arrows, showing an arrow pointing rightward under the digits, like follows:
      one two yyyy 1234 xxx
      ------> <------------

                   --->



6)      In section “HTML 4”, when one example contains more than one occurrence of LTR or RTL text, I suggest to represent them as e.g. “RTL-TEXT-1”, “RTL-TEXT-2”, etc… to avoid confusion.



7)      A nit: in section “LRM/LRM”, the official names for U+200E and U+200F should have no hyphen before the last word “MARK”.



8)      Another nit: in “Fixing use case 1 in HTML 4”,  change “If there is already suitable markup to surround the the book title” to “If there is already suitable markup to surround the book title”.
There are other occurrences of “the the”, just look for them.



9)      In the following “advanced usage notes”, “an left-to-right page” should be “a left-to-right page”.



10)   Last paragraph of “Use case 1” says: “Marking up with bdi tags avoids you needing to figure out whether there is likely to be a potential issue, due to incorrect assignment of direction by the auto value, avoids the need to change markup as further edits are made, and avoids you having to remember two different markup approaches.”
I fail to see the rationale for the first 2 statements.



11)   In section “Punctuation at the end of an opposite-direction phrase”, we find “Note that it makes no difference that there are actually two punctuation characters and a space in this position - they are all neutrals and so are all affected the same way”.
I can find only one punctuation character in this position of the example.



12)   In the MAC address example, we see “4a” in the example but “04” in the explanation text which precedes it.
In the HTML 4 code  below, we find “04” again. Same for the HTML 5 code.

 

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Shalom (Regards),  Mati