RE: dir attribute in HTML 5

If the 'presentation layer' means the CSS style sheet, I think that we
should say that HTML5, like HTML4, should be able to render bidi text
without a style sheet, and it would break backwards compatibility to remove
the ability of a browser to do so without CSS. Therefore HTML5 has to
describe the expected behavior in at least the detail of HTML4 rather than
leave it up to the presentation layer. 

Note also that the bdo section doesn't leave this completely up to the
presentation layer - which is more confusing for the content author.  Which
should they do? If they do it through CSS, will that override the specified
behavior described above? Etc.

We should also ask that a note be added to the spec that says use the bidi
markup provided, rather than attaching CSS styling to arbitrary markup such
as <p> etc. 

I think we should also ask them to consider allowing two new attribute
values 'rlo' and 'lro' for dir. We do not need to remove the bdo element,
but this will allow content authors who wish to to transition to the
scenario we preferred for ITS. It will also provide some additional power to
the author, since you will be able to attach dir="lro" to a block element.

RI

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/blog/
http://rishida.net/

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-i18n-core-request@w3.org [mailto:public-i18n-core-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Felix Sasaki
> Sent: 24 January 2008 02:51
> To: public-i18n-core@w3.org
> Subject: dir attribute in HTML 5
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I had a look at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-20080122/#the-dir
> were it says
> "The processing of this attribute depends on the presentation layer. For
> example, CSS 2.1 defines a mapping from this attribute to the CSS
> 'direction' and 'unicode-bidi' properties, and defines rendering in
> terms of those properties."
> This is quite different to HTML 4
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/dirlang.html#adef-dir
> which contains references for implementers of the Unicode BIDI
> algorithm, or ITS
> http://www.w3.org/TR/its/#directionality-definition
> which points to CSS 2.1 definitions not "For example", but recommends to
> use these.
> 
> I would propose to make a comment on HTML 5 that they should follow the
> ITS approach, that is to be more specific about the required semantics
> and recommend CSS 2.1
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Felix

Received on Tuesday, 29 January 2008 16:43:38 UTC