Re: RTL languages

thanks for everyone's comments.
Changes are posted.
http://www.i18nguy.com/temp/W3C%20I18N%20Q&A%20Which%20languages%20are%20right-to-left.html

Marco Cimarosti wrote:
> 
> Tex Texin wrote:
> > 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!
> 
> In addition to what Richard already said:
> 
> - "Classical Syriac", "Modern Syriac" and "Syriac" are all one and the same
> script, by the point of view of information technology. I suspect which a
> pair of these can be seen as the same script also by the point of view of
> grammatology.

ok, merged

> 
> - AFAIK, "Indonesian" is not a script. Have you perhaps swapped the Script
> and Language columns on this row?

removed. Came from elsewhere.
> 
> - AFAIK, there is no computer character set for N'ko. Therefore, it is
> unlikely that a designer is asked to design a page in this language.

ok. I'll leave it in for kicks.

> 
> - The South Arabian script is extinct, as probably are the languages which
> where written with it: Hadhramautic, Himyaritic, Qatabanic, and Sabaic. I am
> quite confident that Sabaic is extinct.

removed.

> - Ladino/Judezmo is most often written in the Latin alphabet, especially on
> a web page. Consider that the biggest Ladino communities are in Turkey and
> in the two Americas, where the Latin script is normally used. I don't know
> whether Ladinos in Israel also use the Hebrew script, but I have seen many
> Israeli pages about folklore where Ladino songs where only in Latin scripts.

ok. I added a note at the top of the table. I may remove Ladino, or I may do
something further with identifying languages that use multiple scripts.
> 
> - The term "Ideographic languages" suffers of about the same problems as the
> term "bidi languages". Perhaps even more, as the term "ideograph(ic)" per se
> is debatable. A better term is "CJK languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)",
> which is quite likely to be familiar to anyone involved in
> internationalization.

The paragraph uses both. I see Ideographic used quite a bit.

> 
> But you should perhaps add information for *all* the script in Unicode and
> the main languages written with them. It may be less than obvious that, say,
> Marathi is written in the Devanagari script, and that Devanagari is written
> LTR.

hmmm, yes. When I get more time. I actually started out that way.

> 
> <SUGGESTION value=$0.02>

It's a good one, but I can't pursue it now.
I will continue to accept suggestions as to which languages and scripts should
be added.

> 
> If you want to give comprehensive information, it'd perhaps be better to
> rearrange completely the information in two separate tables, the first one
> mapping languages to script(s), and the second one mapping scripts to
> directionality:
> 
> Languages table:
> 
>         Language:       Script(s):      Notes:
>         ...             ...             ...
>         Croatian        Latin           Cmp. Serbian
>         ...             ...             ...
>         Ladino  Latin, Hebrew   Also known as "Judezmo" or "Judeo-Spanish"
>         ...             ...             ...
>         Serbian Cyrillic, Latin Cmp. Croatian
>         ...             ...             ...
> 
> Scripts table:
> 
>         Script: Dir:    Notes:
>         ...     ...     ...
>         Cyrillic        LTR
>         ...     ...     ...
>         Hebrew  RTL
>         ...     ...     ...
>         Latin   LTR     Also known as "Roman"
>         ...     ...     ...
> 
> A first draft selection of languages for table 1 could all the languages
> having a two-letter code in ISO 639
> (http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html). Note that, e.g.,
> Ladino would not be included.
> 
> Finding out which script(s) are used for each languages could be an
> interesting trivia game for the members of this mailing list. :-)
> 
> </SUGGESTION>
> 
> _ Marco
> 
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Received on Wednesday, 6 August 2003 10:41:47 UTC