RE: Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts, additional changes

Hi.
> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:03:49 -0400
> To: matial@il.ibm.com
> CC: ishida@w3.org; www-international@w3.org
> From: cowan@ccil.org
> Subject: Re: Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts, additional changes
> 
> Matitiahu Allouche scripsit:
> 
> > I suggest to stick to a more classic definition of 'Visual', such as:
> > 'Visual' refers to the practice of storing Hebrew characters in 
> > presentation order, so that there is no reliance on reordering performed 
> > by the operating system or the display subsystem.
> 
> Except, what is "presentation order"? It can be rightward, leftward,
> or upward nowadays. To speak of left to right order as "presentation
> order" is to submit to a purely parochial viewpoint.
 
Hmm, o.k., but I think Mati's suggestion is fine here--given the topic of Richard Ishida's text.
> 
> I would go with "the practice of storing Hebrew characters in
> left-to-right order on each line of text", combined with an explanation
> that the term "visual" is a historical one rooted in the days when only
> left-to-right reading was considered normal for computer text.
> 
> > This sentence is problematic, IMHO: HTML is a protocol and does not use 
> > the Unicode bidi algorithm.
> 
> HTML is not a protocol but a format.
Right; HTTP or HTTPS (or FTP) is the protocol, as I understand it.  HTML is a markup language.  I did not have a problem with Richard Ishida's sentence here, however--maybe i need enlightening.  HTML and XML pages allow text to be displayed and the text can be stored in various character encodings including unicode; I don't know if this is using the unicode bidi algorithm or not.  
> 
> > I suggest the following phrasing:
> > HTML assumes by default that Bidi data is stored in logical order, to that
> > present the text in correct visual order. If the encoding is ISO-8859-9, 
> > the corresponding charset specification must be ISO-8859-8-i.
> 
> (The mention of 8859-9 is clearly a typo here.)
> 
> Again, this is a biased wording. I would go with:
> 
> The charset specifies whether a document encoded in 8859-8 is in visual or
> logical order. Use the charset "iso-8859-8-i" for logical order encoding
> (preferred), or "iso-8859-8" for visual-order encoding (deprecated).
> Text in Unicode and other encodings is always in logical order.
> 
> -- 
> We call nothing profound cowan@ccil.org
> that is not wittily expressed. John Cowan
> --Northrop Frye (improved)
> 
Best,
 
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com