RE: Bidi controls vs markup revamp

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your comment.  I was originally going to respond that this was why I said "where markup is available", but I figured it may help to expand a little in the direction you mention.

I expressed it slightly differently, however. I added to the background:

"These characters are used in pairs.  The first four characters mentioned above are used  first and indicate the start of a range of text; the range is terminated by the last (PDF) character in each case." 

and changed the initial sentence of the answer to 

"In (X)HTML and XML do not use the paired Unicode bidi formatting code characters where markup is available."

I preferred 'paired' rather than 'stateful' since it requires less explanation to get to the same place.

(Note that I had already also promoted the text about RLM/LRM from the 'by the way' section to the answer.)

This does leave hanging the question about whether you should use something like <rlm /> if the schema developer provides it, but that is probably ok, since this faq was intending to deal with the paired characters, and i don't know of any advice to schema developers to do such a thing.

Cheers,
RI
 

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/blog/
http://rishida.net/




 


________________________________

 From: mark.edward.davis@gmail.com [mailto:mark.edward.davis@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
 Sent: 23 November 2007 00:30
 To: Richard Ishida
 Cc: public-i18n-core@w3.org
 Subject: Re: Bidi controls vs markup revamp
 
 
 The Answer doesn't work. You have:
 
 

 Answer


 In (X)HTML and XML do not use the Unicode bidi formatting code characters where markup is available.

 People will be confused by this, since the recommendation is to use the bidi formatting characters &rlm; and &lrm; in preference to either markup or the stateful bidi formatting characters. 
 
 You can introduce the stateless formatting characters before the answer, and then the answer can be the following. (slight wordsmithing also, although I think it needs a bit further work)
 

 Answer


 Avoid using the stateful Unicode bidi formatting characters in HTML and in XML, where equivalent markup is available. 


 On Nov 22, 2007 10:10 AM, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org> wrote:
 


  Chaps,
  
  I was editing the ITS WG's Best Practices for XML Internationalization this afternoon and I needed to refer to an explanation of why you should use markup rather than unicode control characters.  The obvious article was http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-controls.en but (a) that was very focused on HTML, and (b) I have felt for some time that it needed some beefing up, particularly in the explanation dept. 
  
  So I set about creating a new version, currently visible at http://www.w3.org/International/questions/temp.php
  
  I'd like to publish this new version asap.  Please tell me whether you have any issues with it before Wednesday's telecon. 
  
  Thanks,
  RI
  
  ============
  Richard Ishida
  Internationalization Lead
  W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
  
  http://www.w3.org/International/ 
  http://rishida.net/blog/
  http://rishida.net/
  
  
  
  
  




 -- 
 Mark

Received on Monday, 26 November 2007 13:08:34 UTC