RE: Bidi space Q&A

Tex, 

Which CSS spec are you talking about here?

RI

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

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



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tex Texin [mailto:tex@i18nguy.com] 
> Sent: 05 July 2003 07:36
> To: ishida@w3.org; 'Martin Duerst'; ian@hixie.ch; 
> public-i18n-geo@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Bidi space Q&A
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Some thoughts on the bidi space question-
> 
> 1) I see the CSS draft has picked up the drawings from our 
> question. They use boxes with different borders (e.g. dotted) 
> so they are distinguished by more than color. We should 
> probably do the same for accessibility reasons.
> 
> 2) At the end of their text they say:
> 
> "Note that there are two spaces between A and B, and none 
> between B and C. This is best avoided by using the natural 
> bidirectionality of characters instead of explicit embedding levels."
> 
> Can someone explain this to me? I understand that 
> neutral-directionality characters in between strong 
> characters inherit their direction. However, with css, 
> direction is either ltr, rtl, or inherited. So if I have an 
> element it will have some direction. I don't have a way to 
> say direction=none, or "continue the direction of the 
> elements on either side of me." Simply inserting a span into 
> a string might change its direction explicitly or according 
> to its parent's direction. Maybe I misunderstand this?
> 
> 3) Just an aside, I think we need to tell the CSS folks to 
> say that unicode-bidi has to be normal for their spec to be 
> precise. We didn't need to say it because we ruled out CSS 
> from the question.
> 
> 4) With respect to embedding levels, the last part of the 
> technical detail section, the levels are right only if A, B, 
> and C are characters of the same direction as the element 
> they are in. It's a reasonable assumption, but perhaps we 
> should make it explicit. For example, if B were an LTR 
> character, the levels would be 12321. Some people may 
> mistakenly believe that setting an elements direction somehow 
> sets the direction of all of its contents rather than just 
> the neutral characters. (Maybe that's a good suggestion for 
> another question. "Why does setting direction only affect 
> some characters?")
> 
> tex
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
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> Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
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Received on Saturday, 5 July 2003 13:07:52 UTC