Re: [css3-text] text-transform: han-numerals

On 26 October 2010 13:00, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> [Adding back www-style]
> On 10/26/2010 06:28 AM, MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given) wrote:
>>> On 2010/10/26 17:26, John Daggett wrote:
>>>> Martin J. Dürst 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 (�Z���O...) may be
>>>> > preferred.
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>
> It's true that there are many ways to represent numbers in Han characters.
> It's also true that there are many ways to represent numbers in the Latin
> script. I can write
>
> 1,000,000
> 1 million
> one million
> etc.
>
> But, as with the various Han representations, only one of those is in a
> decimal system: the others are mixtures of digits and words. We can
> transform decimal to decimal easily. And I think this is adequate for
> hitting the 80% use case.

I can't speak for Japanese, but in Chinese, "a mixture of digits and
words" is normal. "A (pure) decimal system" (meaning, I suppose,
writing each digit down one by one without regards to its positional
value), on the other hand, is the anomaly: You do find them in use,
but it's the exception, not the rule.

> For anyone who wants to do something more complicated, then more markup
> support is needed. But even then, HTML+CSS can do it:
>
>  <abbr class="number" title="三十五">35</abbr>
>
> vertical.css:
>  abbr.number { content: attr(title) }
>
> So I don't really see this issue as a problem. Also, I think it is not
> a showstopper if numbers cannot be converted from the preferred form
> for vertical to the preferred form for horizontal: it might not adhere
> to the full force of typographic tradition, but using decimal digits
> in vertical is neither wrong nor uncommon.

I agree completely. This is also a much better solution than the
double-span proposal earlier.


-- 
cheers,
-ambrose

Received on Tuesday, 26 October 2010 18:33:30 UTC