Re: [css-writing-modes] Does not mention "auto" for the "direction" property

> As one of the people involved in the design of the 'direction' and 
> 'unicode-bidi' properties, I agree with fantasai that the uses for 
> 'unicode-bidi' (besides UAs) are few and far between.

> However, saying that it's limited strictly to UAs is going too far.

> Cases where it can be useful may be the following:

> 1) Arabic or hebrew script displayed with a font that uses equivalent 
> Latin glyphs, and for which the direction has to be fixed because RTL 
> Latin doesn't make sense.

> 2) XML or XML-like documents where direction is given by an attribute, 
> but this attribute (or attributes) are not named "dir", and/or their 
> values are not named "rtl", "ltr",...

> 3) XML or XML-like documents where certain fields (appearing scattered 
> throughout the document) are RTL by default or by definition, and where 
> adding a dir='rtl' attribute on each of them would be overkill.

> So the summary is "You shouldn't use this unless you're an UA or you're 
> really exactly sure of what you're doing."

> Regards,   Martin.


I think the cases (2) and (3) are quite common...

===

Concerning another case: XML or XML-like documents where the direction
*is* given by the "dir" attribute.

While HTML is capable of controlling directionality by the *standard*
"dir" attribute and not making use of CSS, does XML have such a
capability, too (without developing its own markup)?

In order to express the directionality, should a "normative" XML be
compliant with the Internalization Tag Set Recommendations (which
implies using "its:dirRule" element/ "its:dir" attribute)?
   https://www.w3.org/TR/its/#directionality

Thanks, Lina

Received on Tuesday, 27 September 2016 13:58:16 UTC