FW: Bidi comments for html5

[Forwarded for Najib]
-----Original Message-----
From: Najib Tounsi [mailto:ntounsi@gmail.com] 
Sent: 25 February 2008 16:16
To: Richard Ishida
Cc: public-i18n-core@w3.org
Subject: Re: Bidi comments for html5

Hi Rchard, all,

The dir attribute is one of the most important HTML markup for Bidi prose.
I think that all what is related to bidi, should be well 
define/specified. The spec should elaborate more on this, for the dir 
attribute to be  clearly understood  by HTML content authors as well as 
by browsers designers.  e.g.  in HTML4, it is not sufficient to only 
mention that there are rtl and ltr scripts, that <bdo> overrides the 
bidi algorithm and that dir change directionality .  At least, HTML spec 
should link loudly to various I18n WG publishing about Bidi.
I18n WG, should take care not to miss the opportunity of the brand new 
HTML5 to put dot on the "i"s where appropriate.

About, dir="rlo" or "lro", the idea is good (useful for block elements) 
but reading HTML4 spec, it is yet not easy to see exactly what does the 
dir attribute do, and especially what it does not do. How not to confuse 
the situation by adding these two new values "rlo and "lro" to the old 
ones "rtl" and "ltr"?
I am not against the idea, but things should be made clearer.

(Btw, about acronyms, it is already easy to get confused by RLE/LRE vs 
RLM/LRM vs RTL/LTR. For the anecdote, in HTML4, you can read [1]:
--
LEFT-TO-RIGHT EMBEDDING ("LRE", hexadecimal 202A)
POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING ("PDF", hexadecimal 202C)
RIGHT-TO-LEFT EMBEDDING ("RTE", hexadecimal 202B)
--
RTE in stead of RLE?)

Any comments?

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/dirlang.html#h-8.2.3


Regards, Najib
(Please reply to ntounsi@emi.ac.ma)


Richard Ishida wrote:
> I just created a (new type of) comment table for HTML5 comments and added those raised by Felix about dir and bdo elements.
>
> I would like to discuss this during the telecon tonight, please.
>
> http://www.w3.org/International/reviews/0802-html5/
>
>
> RI
>
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> Internationalization Lead
> W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
>  
> http://www.w3.org/International/
> http://rishida.net/blog/
> http://rishida.net/

Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2008 15:52:02 UTC