[Bug 28257] [webvtt] start/end linked to left/right [I18N-ISSUE-422]

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=28257

--- Comment #34 from Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com> ---
(In reply to Silvia Pfeiffer from comment #33)
> (In reply to Simon Pieters from comment #32)
> Yeah, it's confusing. I think it also changed at some point in the past and
> I remembered a former spec.
> 
> Originally, there was a difference between 'align:left' and 'align:start'
> that also influenced the positioning of the box. That is what I remembered.

OK.

> But now that I think back, I think we changed it.

Yep.

> I think it was a use case from YouTube where they had a 50% wide box with
> left aligned LTR text and were surprised when the box flipped over to the
> other side after a translation. That was was unexpected because the box had
> been reduced to avoid stuff on screen. Basically the argument was that a
> translation should not move the text box.

Right. So then we shouldn't move the box to the right for RTL, even though
doing so would "make sense" in isolation.


> It doesn't matter what I want - it's what makes sense to captioners that
> matters.

Sure, it's just a level of indirection. ;-)


> For WebVTT, I would think it's the first line that determines the position
> of the box.

(It was until it was changed based on feedback from YouTube to not do that...)

> BTW: this is all a bit tricky and it took me a while to put it all in a
> logical system, because this box related positioning is so different from
> the CSS flow based positioning. Anyway - I'm sorry about the confusion.

Yeah, no worries. It seems we're on the same page now, so that's good. Also
sorry if I came across as harsh or whatever. :-)

The remaining question is what is the least bad option: the current spec
(align:start moves the box to the left) or my proposal (align:start leaves the
box centered)?

The main reason I think my proposal is less bad is that moving the box to the
left is "wrong" for RTL text, but leaving it centered is not. Having semantics
where a keyword "start" doesn't reflect base directionality of the text
confuses the terminology. Bidi is confusing as it is, we shouldn't make it
worse.

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Received on Monday, 15 February 2016 14:09:33 UTC