RE: Bidi controls vs markup revamp

Hello Richard,

Some more comments:

A sidebar reads:

>>>>
We show examples using text in real right-to-left scripts for those who can appreciate them. For those who don't have the necessary support for such scripts, we include an ASCII-only, visually ordered transliteration immediately afterwards that shows where each letter is displayed in the original example.
>>>>

I find "appreciate" and "don't have the necessary support" confusing.
People might 'appreciate' some Hebrew or Arabic letters even if they
can't read them. And people may want a Latin-based (and I agree with
switching from transliterated Hebrew to upper-case English words)
example anyway, even if they have font support. I think the best
thing here is to restrict yourself to say what you are doing, not
why. People won't have much difficulties figuring out the why.

In the first example, you use a lot of conditionals. I would at least
remove the 'would' from "The correct result when displayed would look
like this:". Why not simply "The correct display looks as follows:".

In the examples, the ASCII version always has a very visible title
("ASCII version"), which in my oppinion makes it stick out too much.

I also think that the term 'paired' is a bit of a problem, because
it is new and it doesn't explain the problem, and even ‎ or so
could be paired in some way, e.g. as in ‎,‎.

Regards,    Martin.

At 22:11 07/11/26, Richard Ishida wrote:
>
>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 


#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 06:17:37 UTC