Re: [minutes] Internationalization telecon 2019-02-07

I think that we should check 横書き登場―日本語表記の近代 (岩波新書 新赤版 (863)).
It appears to be very valuable.  I do not have time today, but it is
available
in the library of Keio SFC.

Regards,
Makoto

2019年2月13日(水) 22:57 r12a <ishida@w3.org>:

> hi Martin,
>
> On 13/02/2019 10:57, Martin J. Dürst wrote:
> > Hello Richard, others,
> >
> > On 2019/02/08 00:37, r12a wrote:
> >> https://www.w3.org/2019/02/07-i18n-minutes.html
> >
> >>      richard: actually vertical text with 1 character per column is
> >>      really an urban myth
> >
> > I'm not sure about this. When you see 門生羅 (and not 羅生門, as it would be
> > with LTR) at the top of a gate, the easiest way to explain why the
> > characters are placed the way they are is that whoever wanted to write
> > them was used to writing vertical lines (i.e. columns), with the columns
> > going from right to left, but only was able to fit one character per
> > 'line' (i.e. column).
> >
> > Of course, this was done rather implicitly and without calling each
> > character a column. And we cannot go back to the people who wrote the
> > name of a door on the top of a door in ancient times, but it's the best
> > explanation we have so far. If you have a better one, I'd like to hear
> > about it.
>
>
> There's a discussion related to this at
> https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/2754 which points to or shows
> examples of text that is multiline, but written RTL.  See also the
> article at https://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/right-to-left.html which talks
> about Meiji era explorations related to inline character direction.
>
> If you look at old japanese postage stamps, the text tends to be written
> on a curved path, which also feels to me at least unlike single
> character columns.
>
>
> >>      ... it's nonsensical
> >
> > It may be nonsensical (or not) as an approach to how to format it with
> > CSS. It may also not apply to more 'modern' Chinese examples, in
> > particular from Taiwan, where I think multiple-line RTL headings can
> > also appear.
>
> My main concern is that i keep hearing from people who are suggesting
> that RTL chinese and japanese should be authored in HTML by using
> writing-modes and limiting the column height to one character.  Apart
> from the fact that that is like trying to crack an egg with a hammer, it
> doesn't actually work for the multiline text i mentioned above.
>
> People may or may not think of certain items of horizontal RTL text as
> single character columns, but i don't think that's a good way to author
> the text.
>
> hth clarify a little the (probably too) brief minutes.
>
> ri
>
>