RE: RTL languages

Hi Tex,

Some notes from a quick first read...

[1] A lot of the expected readers of this Q&A are content authors who
are struggling to learn about internationalization of web technology.
Apart from the fact that they're unlikely to come across an example of
it, I think listing languages like Hindi under Arabic script with no
qualification is likely to create confusion for the (non-script guru)
readers of this page - particularly as you don't mention it in the
section "Languages that are not right-to-left" -   This applies for
other languages cited too.

[2] Indonesian/Jawi needs some attention.  As I understand it, Jawi is
another name for the old 'Malay' script based on the Arabic script which
was used to write the Malay language. Indonesian is a (fairly recent)
derivation of Malay language.  Today, however, Malay and Indonesian
pretty much use Latin script (indeed only ASCII characters).  So I think
this is incorrect, but also I think it is misleading/confusing for the
average reader of this page without further qualification.

[3] "Languages that are not right-to-left" -> "Languages written in
scripts that are not right-to-left ".  Also I think a lot of expected
readers will find it useful these days if you include indic scripts
here.  'Thai' could be commuted to 'South-East Asian'.  You could add
Georgian and Armenian, if you like.

[4] "In actual fact, they are written vertically top-to-bottom in
lengths of a single character, and therefore appear to be written as
right-to-left.)"  -- as I said before this is not necessarily the case.
I have a Taiwanese newspaper here that does RTL text that is not a
single character deep. (See the attachment - esp the caption of the
photo to the left.)  (Note also that this is bidirectional text - see
8.6% - which has the % on the right, unlike Arabic/Hebrew.)

[5] Please try to describe what's useful to the reader in this context
behind links such as Omniglot, Rosetta Project, etc.

Hope that helps,
RI

============
Richard Ishida
W3C

tel: +44 1753 480 292
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ 
http://www.w3.org/International/ 
http://www.w3.org/International/geo/ 

See the W3C Internationalization FAQ page
http://www.w3.org/International/questions.html



> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tex Texin
> Sent: 06 August 2003 09:26
> To: qalam@yahoogroups.com; GEO
> Subject: RTL languages
> 
> 
> 
> OK, I am ready for another round of abuse. The next draft of 
> the Q&A for "which languages are RTL?" is here:
> 
> http://www.i18nguy.com/temp/W3C%20I18N%20Q&A%20Which%20languag
es%20are%20right-to-left.html

I would be glad for your comments, and in particular your review of the
languages and scripts listed, and suggestions for others.

Note reference to "bidi" is removed!

tex

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Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
                         
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