[review feedback] Creating HTML Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and Other Right-to-left Scripts

These are my comments on the document stored at http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/new-bidi-xhtml

 

1) In section “In a nutshell”, second paragraph, the text mentions “default direction” in the first sentence and “base direction” in the second one, while referring to the same concept. This could confuse people in a hurry. I suggest to modify the second sentence from 

“Use the dir attribute on block elements within the page only where you need to change the base direction.”

to

“Use the dir attribute on block elements within the page only where their direction should be different from the default.”

 

2) Later in the same section, I suggest to replace “the” by “their” in the sentence “For inline text, tightly wrap all opposite-direction phrases in markup that sets the base direction.”

 

3) In the definition of UBA, I suggest to replace

“It describes an algorithm used to determine the directionality for bidirectional Unicode text that is widely supported by web browsers and other applications”

by

“It describes an algorithm used to determine the directionality for bidirectional Unicode text and is widely supported by web browsers and other applications”

Rationale: with the original phrasing, one could understand that it is the bidirectional Unicode text which is widely supported, rather than the algorithm.

 

4) The section “markup for text direction” announces “we refer you to two key articles” but in fact the following text references three articles.

 

5) The 2 last references in the document mention RLM and LRM characters. Considering that UTC has approved the addition of ALM (Arabic-Letter Mark), the two referred articles should be updated to include ALM, and the mentions of RLM and LRM in this document should be changed to include ALM.

 

Shalom (Regards),  Mati