agenda+ String-Meta authoring guidance

I made this comment:
https://github.com/w3c/vc-data-model/issues/1424#issuecomment-1962999923

 

In this issue, the WG wants to remove RTL direction fields from purely RTL
Arabic strings "because UTF-8 will get it right". In responding to this I
said:

 

*	I disagree. When the Arabic string is inserted in another context,
it wants to be bidi isolated. Doing that means setting the base direction
for the string. If there is no base direction stored in the record, the
consumer has to figure out (by inspecting the string or from the language
tag) which string direction to use--or depend on auto, if that is an option
in the target context. auto is an option in HTML, but many UI APIs (Windows,
MacOS, Java, etc.) require a specific direction.

LTR is the default for most applications and most languages, so omitting the
@direction from left-to-right en and fr texts isn't a serious disadvantage
to those strings. But it's a good idea to always transmit RTL text with an
RTL direction. It is the case that purely Arabic strings will work
appropriately with auto, so I don't disagree with (person)'s observation.
But most applications don't have humans evaluating each string for whether
the direction is needed or not.

I wanted to point to authoring guidance in string-meta, but that's lacking.
Let's discuss whether (a) my response was the appropriate one and (b) either
way, how to record durably our recommendations.

 

~Addison

 

Addison Phillips

Chair (W3C Internationalization WG)

 

Internationalization is not a feature.

It is an architecture.