Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Handwriting Recognition API (#591)

> This being said, existing recognizers (those available on the market) don't support mixed scripts (e.g. english + arabic). They will recognize text as if the text is written in a single script (e.g. recognize arabic characters as english characters, and give less-ideal results).
> 
> I don't think we should try to solve the mixed script problem if the underlying implementations haven't solved it. Our solution may not work for them. Or, if the implementation is advanced, it doesn't care about whether we provide this information / hint).

Sure, text written in English rarely has Arabic text in it, but that's not true at all the other way around. Text written in Arabic and all the other languages that use RTL scripts will contain LTR Latin script text on a regular basis.  Not only that, but they will also contain numbers, and those are written LTR within the RTL flow.  Same goes for expressions, numeric ranges, etc. for some languages.  For example, in Hebrew you'll write "Score: 82" as 

![Screenshot 2021-08-31 at 16 27 12](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4839211/131531181-e72ed038-f9a3-4fb0-907a-348a858eb8a0.png)

I don't think you'd want the text stored in memory to become "Score: 28".

Or how about: "No parking: 08:00 - 20:00". Will the text stored in memory indicate that you can't park during the day, or overnight – it depends on the direction in which the range is read, and that will depend on the rules of the language being used.

Note that https://github.com/WICG/handwriting-recognition/issues/4 already raises some of these issues, but as yet has no response.

Sorry, but I don't buy that you don't have to consider how this would work if implementations don't currently enable handwriting recognition properly for large percentages of the people on the planet.  Our mission is to make the World Wide Web accessible worldwide.  I think some thought has to be given to how to address the needs of the currently underserved millions of potential users.




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