Re: A question on RWPM: why the 'metadata' tag?

Be careful not to conflate language direction with progression direction.


Manga comics written in English still "progress" from right-to-left, but the text on each page reads left-to-right. If you got those mixed up, you'd ruin the story! :)


Cheers,

Benjamin


--

http://bigbluehat.com/

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________________________________
From: Hadrien Gardeur <hadrien.gardeur@feedbooks.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 8:36:52 AM
To: Daniel Glazman
Cc: W3C Publishing Working Group
Subject: Re: A question on RWPM: why the 'metadata' tag?

So what's the progression direction if the collection says ltr and if
the specific resource says rtl and has more than one page? IMO, that
example alone clearly requires an importance order to be specified, the
directions are conflicting.

As Laurent pointed out, this is the progression direction between resources.

On iOS for instance, we have what we call a triptych view:

|  Webview 1  |  Webview 2  |  Webview 3  |

We use this information to decide what goes in the first and third webviews:

  *   2 always shows the current resource
  *   with ltr, 1 is the previous resource and 3 is the next one
  *   with rtl, 1 is the next resource and 3 is the previous one

This is useful to create a better UX:

  *   we can use the native swipe/drag between webviews
  *   we can also prerender content in the background

I've seen similar takes on this using iframes as well on the Web, for instance in Overdrive Read or Google's AMP viewer.
If browsers implement native support for Web Publications along with dedicated gestures and/or UI elements, this could serve a similar goal. For example, an enhanced reader mode could offer the ability to swipe or tap between resources of a Web Publication.

If the content of each resource is paginated or scrolled horizontally, I agree that there's potentially a "less than optimal UX" if the resource says ltr and the progression direction of the collection is marked as rtl.
But that information is necessary for a number of user agents and as always, this is collection level information which doesn't conflict with resource level stuff.

Both the W3C WP manifest and RWPM are all about expressing information about collections. This is quite different from the Web App Manifest, where the focus is mostly on presenting information for the installation phase.