RE: [iri] #121: BIDI: Some users are requiring right-to-left label ordering.

My read on the situation:

It would be helpful if we could get some agreed text describing the nature of the problem --
 it sounds to me that there might be agreement on the problem (more or less) ,
just not on whether there are feasible (partial) solutions.

If we have agreement on the problem statement, then we can:

* document partial solutions (with caveats)
* say we don't believe there are any feasible solutions at this time

It would be useful also to get a survey of of what current implementations actually are doing now, along with some concrete examples of the nature of the problems.

> I really need an way, even optional if need be, of rendering for RT  before I can "sign off" on this draft :)

There's no magic, just "rough consensus and running code":

* if all of the implementations agree, then we can document that. 
* If  there are multiple implementations currently, we can try to pick one.
* if we don't like any of the implementations, we can say so.
* If there are no implementations or even demos or samples of implementations, we shouldn't hold our breath hoping one will appear. 

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net



-----Original Message-----
From: iri issue tracker [mailto:trac+iri@gamay.tools.ietf.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 7:15 AM
To: draft-ietf-iri-bidi-guidelines@tools.ietf.org; duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp; shawnste@microsoft.com; adil@diwan.com
Cc: public-iri@w3.org
Subject: Re: [iri] #121: BIDI: Some users are requiring right-to-left label ordering.

#121: BIDI: Some users are requiring right-to-left label ordering.


Comment (by shawnste@…):

 Well, I disagree with pretty much every point :)
 * clearly everything won't be consistent because plain text that doesn't
 know how to detect an IRI isn't going to behave as expected.
 * I think that the importance isn't consistency between devices, but
 rather the ability for users to consistently transcribe the IRI.  That
 includes not only display on devices, but input through whatever keyboards
 from sticky notes that were transcribed by hand from an IRI on the side of
 a bus.
 * Related, I don't think they can be "unnatural".
 * There's a lot of pressure to ensure that RTL domains are "correctly"
 rendered in RTL fashion.  So I think we'd get a better job of consistency
 if the guidelines took that into account instead of having software
 developers trying to do something "better" in an inconsistent fashion.
 * Though fixing the BIDI Algorithm would help, it's not required.  Indeed,
 the proposed behavior uses bidi override marks to get the desired
 behavior.  The same thing can be done for RTL.  Granted a better BIDI
 algorithm for IRIs would make "plain text" better, but it’s not required.
 * As noted, this isn’t necessarily easily gleaned from the script(s) being
 used, as some cultural and user preferences also influence it.

 I disagree that there’s anything particularly interesting about “safe”.  I
 think that as long as the sections are consistently from left to right or
 right to left it doesn’t matter whether its drawn http://www.microsoft.com

 or com.microsoft.www/ /:http.  Indeed if that was the user preference,
 independent of the actual script, then they’d always be consistent for
 that user.  If there does prove to be a spoofing problem with
 http://www.spoof.me.com/com.microsoft.www//:http type things, those are
 fairly easy for malware filters to detect.  Also 90% of users can’t tell
 that http://www.microsoft.safe-secure.com isn’t a great place to enter a
 credit card #.  At the machine level, the rendering is irrelevant since
 it’s always stored the same way.

 I really need an way, even optional if need be, of rendering for RTL
 before I can "sign off" on this draft :)

-- 
---------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  shawnste@…     |       Owner:  draft-ietf-iri-bidi-guidelines@…
     Type:  defect         |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  major          |   Milestone:
Component:  bidi-          |     Version:
  guidelines               |  Resolution:  wontfix
 Severity:  -              |
 Keywords:  bidi           |
---------------------------+-----------------------------------------------

Ticket URL: <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/iri/trac/ticket/121#comment:4>
iri <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/iri/>

Received on Wednesday, 28 March 2012 22:31:40 UTC