RE: [css3-writing-modes] before/after terminology alternative?

Hi Martin, thank you for the reply.

> > Thank you for the info, I understand that better now. But since discussion here is
> > about W3C's statement about compatibility, someone taking over the spec doesn't
> > seem to make a big difference, does it?
> 
> I'm not sure what you meant with the above sentence. In case you wanted to say
> "because it's now outside of W3C, W3C doesn't need to care anymore", I would have
> to disagree quite clearly.

I didn't go that far, but CSS WG to make a forever commitment for compatibility with external body sounds like a bit over-commit to me, isn't it?


> > Still, either way, I don't think this "compatibility" part is related with international,
> > and is purely an issue for CSS WG to resolve.
> 
> As I have tried to explain in
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-cjk/2012JulSep/0060.html, it is better
> for internationalization to have the same functionality with the same name across
> related technologies than to have different functionality with the same name or the
> same functionality with a different name,...

I don't disagree with you here. It's always better to have compatibility than not to have.

My point is that we need a trade-off. Compatibility is important, but when issue arose, we have to choose between taking the compatibility and ignore the issue, or resolve the issue by giving up compatibility, depends on the issue and situation. I just don't think compatibility is the absolute rule we need to keep forever.


> To be more explicit, from an internationalization viewpoint it is a failure if features that
> everybody uses frequently (e.g. "color") have the same name across technologies,
> but features that are only used in/with certain cultures/languages/scripts have
> different names across technologies. It penalizes the
> culture/language/script-dependent features, which can't be good for
> internationalization.

The change is requested not because it's a feature only used in certain cultures/languages/scripts. If it were, I guess CSS WG wouldn't care this much. I wish everyone in the world to use logical directions when s/he means logical directions. It's about how much a statement at w3.org/Style needs to be honored, no?


Regards,
Koji

Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2012 05:01:52 UTC