Re: Proposal for new direction attribute

Hello Amir,

In my opinion, using the @lang attribute to set direction is a bad idea. The language tag is not an explicit indicator of the direction of content. It may, of course, imply the direction. But it is a poor indicator compared to either explicit direction or to first strong (auto direction).

Having @lang start a new isolate might be worthwhile, though, since one language embedded in another might very well have different directional characteristics and there is no reason to require users to input both attributes if the content does not inherently require more complex markup.

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N WG)

Sent from my Kindle Fire HD

"Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

The direction/dir transition plan is nice.

It's a bit disappointing, though, that neither of the following
suggestions was considered:
1. Make any element with an explicit lang or dir attribute
bidi-isolated by default
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=18490


2. Apply the direction according to language
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19888


Is there, maybe, a plan to consider this in the future?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com

‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬


2013/2/20 Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>:
> Unicode 6.3 will shortly be released, and will contain new control codes
> (RLI, LRI, FSI, PDI) to enable authors to express isolation at the same time
> as direction in inline bidirectional text. The Unicode Consortium recommends
> that isolation be used as the default for all future inline bidirectional
> text embeddings.
>
> The i18n WG has been discussing how to ensure that HTML5 encourages and
> enables content authors to adopt and apply isolation *as the default*
> whenever they set direction on inline content, and discourage future use of
> dir=rtl or dir=ltr (which does not produce isolation).
>
> The proposal of the WG, with rationales, can be found at
> http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Html-bidi-isolation

>
> i18n WG folks, please let me know asap if you think this needs changing in
> some way.
>
> RI
>
>
> --
> Richard Ishida
> W3C
> http://rishida.net/

>