RE: BDO example?

I'm afraid this isn't a good example, and the rational is incorrect. In all
cases the BDO is not necessary. In some places an ‏ is sufficient, in
other cases a <span dir="ltr"> will do. 

The use of BDO should be limited to when necessary. HTML 4 specification
says: 

"The bidirectional algorithm and the dir attribute generally suffice to
manage embedded direction changes. However, some situations may arise when
the bidirectional algorithm results in incorrect presentation. The BDO
element allows authors to turn off the bidirectional algorithm for selected
fragments of text."

"The BDO element should be used in scenarios where absolute control over
sequence order is required (e.g., multi-language part numbers)."

Please note that when you want to say "Document Object Model (DOM)", in a
right to left paragraph the acronym follows on the left within rtl
parentheses.

The sample given also has an error in the meta tag.

A corrected version, without BDO, is at
http://www.qsm.co.il/Hebrew/nobdo.htm

Jony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of 
> bidi@prognathous.mail-central.com
> Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2003 10:31 AM
> To: ishida@w3.org; www-international@w3.org
> Subject: RE: BDO example?
> 
> 
> 
> Here's an example: 
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tech-evangelism/site/tech-lett
> er-he.html
> You can read the rational for the use of BDO here: 
> http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99578#c14
> 
> Prog.
> 
> On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 22:30:04 +0200, "Jony Rosenne" 
> <rosennej@qsm.co.il>
> said:
> > 
> > I have used it for imbedding legacy data from an IBM 
> mainframe, which 
> > uses visual encoding, in HTML. I suppose this is the most 
> common use 
> > today, because there is quite a lot of legacy Hebrew data out there.
> > 
> > The original example which I gave many years ago and helped 
> convince 
> > Unicode that an override was required was a reference number, or a 
> > part number, which looks like a random groups of digits, Hebrew 
> > letters and Latin letters
> > with slashes between them, which are often used in 
> correspondence. When
> > we
> > still used typewrites, back in the previous century, people 
> could type
> > any
> > odd combination they fancied.
> > 
> > Jony
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: www-international-request@w3.org
> > > [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of 
> Richard Ishida
> > > Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 9:03 PM
> > > To: www-international@w3.org
> > > Subject: BDO example?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Does anyone have a convincing example of the need for BDO
> > > markup in HTML for Arabic or Hebrew?  
> > > 
> > > I already have an example of 'this is what the text looks
> > > like in memory', but that is not very mainstream.  I don't 
> > > really want an example that allows the support of visually 
> > > encoded text, either.
> > > 
> > > Successful proposers may expect to see their example used as
> 
> > > an illustration in the XHTML 2.0 spec and in GEO guidelines.  ;)
> > > 
> > > Thanks in advance,
> > > RI
> > > 
> > > ============
> > > Richard Ishida
> > > W3C
> > > 
> > > tel: +44 1753 480 292
> > > http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
> > > http://www.w3.org/International/ 
> > > http://www.w3.org/International/geo/ 
> > > 
> > > See the W3C Internationalization FAQ page
> > > http://www.w3.org/International/questions.html
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>

Received on Saturday, 16 August 2003 06:47:17 UTC