Re: Weird bidi behavior?

Martin Duerst wrote:
<quote>
One more question: Is there a way to have an embedding
(or also an override) behave in the way that at least
I and Richard seem to have expected (i.e. just behaving
like a single character/object of the respective
directionality on the outside). Currently, it seems to
me that adding &lrm; (or &rlm; if rtl) before and after
might work, but I'm really not sure.
</quote>

Yes, adding &lrm; before and after the span would prevent interaction with 
possible adjacent LTR text, as can be demonstrated with the BidiReference 
application (part of Unibook application) from the Unicode site.

I think that we should distinguish between the Unicode Bidi Algorithmm 
which is defined by UAX #9 and will not be changed except for extremely 
strong reasons which I fail to imagine, and how user agents translate HTML 
dir attributes into UBA entities.  This translation could be changed so 
that a <span dir="ltr"> . . . </span> would translate into <LRM><LRE> . . 
. <PDF><LRM>, which would implement what you understand is the author's 
intent.

However, since all the most common browsers currently understand the test 
case's markup in the same way, changing this understanding will introduce 
incompatibilities, or at least transition problems, so I am not sure it is 
worth it.  The alternative is to educate authors about the LRM trick 
(authors should be aware of a problem anyway, if they bother to check how 
their text looks like before publishing it).

Shalom (Regards),  Mati
           Bidi Architect
           Globalization Center Of Competency - Bidirectional Scripts
           IBM IsraelAgain 
           Phone: +972 2 5888802    Fax: +972 2 5870333    Mobile: +972 52 
2554160

Received on Thursday, 28 August 2008 13:29:05 UTC