RE: Invalid relationship between bandwidth and spoken language

This was a strange remark. For Arabic or Hebrew texts, little if any bidi
markup is needed. dir="rtl" on the HTML will do the work. As the referenced
article says, it is only needed for mixed content. And then there is no
difference between LTR text contained in an RTL document and RTL text
contained in an LTR document.
 
Jony

-----Original Message-----
From: www-international-request@w3.org
[mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Richard Ishida
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 4:11 PM
To: 'Rotan Hanrahan'
Cc: www-international@w3.org
Subject: RE: Invalid relationship between bandwidth and spoken language


Fixed.  
 
RI
 
============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
 
 


  _____  

From: www-international-request@w3.org
[mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Rotan Hanrahan
Sent: 09 March 2007 12:59
To: www-international@w3.org
Subject: Invalid relationship between bandwidth and spoken language



A colleague of mine, working in an Arabic speaking region of the world has
pointed out a comment [1] regarding the use of bidi markup, in which it is
stated: 



"Removing them will significantly simplify the document, and reduce
bandwidth - which may be an important consideration in countries where
Arabic is spoken."

This line seems to suggest that there is an association between lack of
adequate network bandwidth and the speaking of Arabic, an implication I am
sure was not intended. Firstly, the effect of bidi markup on bandwidth
consumption is negligible compared to the accompanying graphics. Secondly,
any saving on payload size should be seen as universally beneficial, not
just for countries characterised by the language they speak.

I suggest that the closing part of that statement ("in countries where
Arabic is spoken") be removed from future revisions, as it is unnecessary
and open to misinterpretation.



---Rotan.

[1]
<http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-bidi.html#ri20030726.132
037950>
http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-bidi.html#ri20030726.1320
37950




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