RE: [css3-writing-modes] Character's intrinsic orientation

Thank you John for the feedback.

Yes, we're aware of that, and to support such scenario, we have introduced a concept called "horizontal typographic mode" and "vertical typographic mode"[1].

Examples you raised are "horizontal typographic mode" layout rotated by 90 degree. You can make it by text-orientation rotate-right or rotate-left.

[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-writing-modes/#text-orientation


Regards,
Koji

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan@ccil.org] On Behalf Of John Cowan
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2011 4:00 AM
To: Koji Ishii
Cc: Eric Muller; www-style@w3.org; CJK discussion (public-i18n-cjk@w3.org)
Subject: Re: [css3-writing-modes] Character's intrinsic orientation

Koji Ishii scripsit:

> That is the whole point of EAW; I don't assume people would write 
> Greek documents in vertical text flow.

In specialized contexts such as the spines of books, horizontal scripts are often written in vertical text flow.  This is not just script-dependent but language-dependent: English-language book spines generally have leftward text progression and are top-to-bottom, whereas German-language spines are rightward bottom-to-top, and Hebrew-language spines are rightward top-to-bottom.

This has the effect that English and Hebrew books lying on their back covers have the spine in normal orientation, whereas German books must lie on their front covers.  In both cases rotated characters are normally but not invariably used; in addition, some book spines have normal horizontal orientation.  I don't know what is done for Greek books.

Additionally, tables and charts often have side legends in vertical text flow.

-- 
Real FORTRAN programmers can program FORTRAN    John Cowan
in any language.  --Ed Post                     cowan@ccil.org

Received on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 19:26:21 UTC