RE: dir attribute in HTML 5

At 01:46 08/01/30, Richard Ishida wrote:
>
>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. 

Yes indeed. In contrast to HTML4, HTML5 could make this description
by referencing CSS and defining a default stylesheet fragment.
This would not mean that you have to implement CSS, just that you
have to make things behave as if you used this CSS default stylesheet
fragment. Also, HTML4 made an exception in that it said that you don't
have to support bidi rendering unless you actually render Arabic or
Hebrew. I'm not sure such an exception clause is still approprate,
but it may be a way to make the adoption of the above a bit easier.

Regards,   Martin.

>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


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

Received on Thursday, 31 January 2008 07:52:36 UTC