[Bug 23260] Make the dir attribute use isolation instead of embedding

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23260

Martin Dürst <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

--- Comment #3 from Martin Dürst <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp> ---
(In reply to Ian 'Hixie' Hickson from comment #2)
> Why are we changing this stuff _again_? Can't we leave it for a few years?
> There's so much churn in this part of the spec that I'd be surprised if any
> browser vendor even looked at the spec any more.

There is indeed quite some churn here, and browser vendors may wait and look at
the spec again once things (including the Unicode Bidi Algorithm itself) have
settled down.

> Are browsers planning on changing to this?
> 
> What problem is it solving?

The actual change that Aharon proposed in comment #1 make sure that the
browsers have leeway when implementing this. They can make sure that the dir
attribute uses isolation by explicitly including the relevant parts of the
default stylesheet. Or they can make sure that the default behavior is just the
same as the default stylesheet.

Another way to interpret Aharon's tweak in comment #1 is that it makes sure the
spec is consistent, nothing more. And I wouldn't want to wait a few years to
make that happen.

> What's the back-compat impact?

If we assume that the default stylesheet part trumps the definition in the
'dir' attribute section, then Aharon's tweak in comment #1 doesn't change
anything.

If you ask about the back-compat impact of the overall bug, I'd describe it as
follows:

There is a difference between embedding and isolation only in weird corner
cases. And these cases are so that when you hit them, you want isolation, not
embedding. You have to fake that by adding some &lrm; or &rlm; or some such.
The fake doesn't do any harm when interpretation changes from embedding to
isolation, it just becomes unnecessary. So the back-compat impact is
essentially non-existent.

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Received on Wednesday, 18 September 2013 03:55:40 UTC