Re: a whole new headache?

New, no; headache, yes.

If you start with the HTML specification (at least any version since HTML4)
and search on BIDI or bi-directional you should find that the
Recommendations from the W3C are squarely in favor of a standard logical
architecture which supports bi-directional lanaguages, and where
line-breaking is performed in rendering by the client and not in the
authoring.  And most or all the rest of what "logical Hebrew" has that
"visual Hebrew" doesn't that makes it superior for your needs.

This does not mean that the fully logicalized implementation is endemic.
There are varying levels of implementation of the W3C Recommendations in
the IT marketplace.

But this does emphasize that Internationalization and Accessibility are
frequently allies in wishing for a more logical view to be preserved in the
medium.

And that sometimes the problem is persuading people to use the logical
version.

Al

At 12:56 PM 2000-09-14 +0200, you wrote:
>A student of mine asked me to look into writing html with a Hebrew which is
>a bi-directional language (so is Arabic).
>From my research for her Visual Hebrew can be see by browsers on all
>platforms: PC, Mac and X-terminal (UNIX). Logical Hebrew can only be seen
>from a PC.
>But,
>Visual Hebrew, the writer (or the converter program) has to take care of
>breaking the lines. So you have to use absolute width with page layout
>tables. If the browser makes break the line by itself, the text will become
>unreadable.
>
>Now for people don't have Hebrew installed on their PC the whole thing is
>gibberish. So you have to have an English version page. But that seems to me
>to be, well, a second best.
>
>A lot of this conflicts with  our guidelines ( absolute width, tables for
>page layout...) and altogether seems to be a big accessibility problem for a
>lot of people.
>
>Have we dealt with all this before I joined? if so were can I read up about
>it?
>
>Or is this a whole new headache?
>
>Yours, with the Tylenol
>Lisa
>

Received on Thursday, 14 September 2000 08:54:33 UTC