Re: [css3-writing-modes] direction vs. writing mode in markup vs. style

Martin and John,

I once tried find some definitions of han-ideographic representations of
numbers.  I find that there are no standards or laws.  Some laws 
mention example representations, but they are just too sketchy.

How do Japanese represent numbers using han-ideographic characters?  
There are more than one way to represent numbers.

For example, 35 can be represented by 

三五,
三十五,
参五, or 
参拾五

305 can be represented by 

三〇五,
三百五,
参百五, or 
参〇五

and 10035 can be represented by 

一万三十五,
壱萬参拾五,
壱〇〇参五,
一〇〇三五, or
１万３５

I do not believe that we can provide automatic conversion from numbers
to han-ideographic representations.

Cheers,
Makoto

> Hello John,
> 
> Your proposal of text-transform: chinese-numerals; makes quite bit more 
> sense because it needs less intervention into the document content. 
> However, if I remember the discussion of the Japanese typography experts 
> on this topic that I had the chance of attending a few years ago, I 
> think their conclusion was more or less: This is a slippery slope. (this 
> was in the context of the committee that was responsible for JIS 4051)
> 
> There are more cases that have to be taken into account than just the 
> example I gave. I think to get really good input, we have to go back to 
> the Japanese typography experts. I have cc'ed the relevant list.
> 
> Regards,   Martin.
> 
> On 2010/10/26 17:26, John Daggett wrote:
> > Hakon Wium Lie wrote:
> >
> >>   >  Sorry to jump into this discussion without potentially understanding all
> >>   >  the details, but while it is to a large extent possible e.g. in Japanese
> >>   >  to switch from horizontal to vertical just by switching styling, there
> >>   >  are some aspects of this switch that need more work. A typical example
> >>   >  is that in horizontal text, you may use Arabic numerals (0123...),
> >>   >  whereas in vertical text, Kanji numbers (〇一二三...) may be preferred.
> >>
> >> That's an interesting use case which can be handled by the above code.
> >> For example, you could have:
> >>
> >>    <span class=arabic>0123</span><span class=kanji>〇一二三</span>
> >>
> >> horizonal.css:
> >>
> >>     .kanji { display: none }
> >>
> >> vertical.css:
> >>
> >>     .arabic { display: none }
> >
> > Might be better to define 'chinese-numerals' as a value for
> > 'text-transform', which transforms u+030-039 to the appropriate chinese
> > numeral characters. Then you would simply have:
> >
> > horizonal.css:
> >
> >     .number { text-transform: none; }
> >
> > vertical.css:
> >
> >     .number { text-transform: chinese-numerals; }
> >
> > The ability to have different stylesheets for different writing modes
> > provides authors more options for styling content.
> >
> > John Daggett
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
> #-# Martin J. Durst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
> #-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Tuesday, 26 October 2010 13:12:02 UTC