RE: [css3-ruby] [css3-text] Position values and before/after definitions in LR vertical writing mode

Hi Steve, just "Koji" is fine :)

Thank you for the reply. Yes, your understanding is exactly the same as mine, I'm glad to see that.

As you said, if we understand Mongolian as "counter-clockwise rotated RTL", you're right that "under" goes right. If we understand this as "left-to-right block progression with baseline rotated clockwise", "under" goes left. My understanding right now is later, but I also agree that we need more information to make further decisions.

I'll investigate further and will be back to you.


Regards,
Koji Ishii

-----Original Message-----
From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Zilles
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2010 2:44 AM
To: Ishii Koji; Alan Gresley
Cc: Richard Ishida; 'fantasai'; www-style@w3.org; 'WWW International'; btmnk0825@gmail.com
Subject: RE: [css3-ruby] [css3-text] Position values and before/after definitions in LR vertical writing mode

Koji-san,
  The point that I was making in an earlier message is that (at least traditionally) vertical Classical Mongolian script is a lefthand rotation of a semitic RTL script. That would mean that the "underline" position is on the right (as is the "after" edge.) I do not know, however, how Mongolian readers currently view this. I did distribute an example which shows an emphasis line on the right. What I do not know is whether a Mongolian reader would see that as an "underline", an "overline" or would find neither term to be very helpful. I believe you were going to check that with a Mongolian expert. It is certainly an "underline" in the original semitic horizontal RTL script.l

So, in short, no I do not yet agree with you table for the reasons above.

Steve Zilles


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ishii Koji [mailto:kojiishi@gluesoft.co.jp]
> Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2010 2:39 AM
> To: Alan Gresley; Stephen Zilles
> Cc: Richard Ishida; 'fantasai'; www-style@w3.org; 'WWW International'; 
> btmnk0825@gmail.com
> Subject: RE: [css3-ruby] [css3-text] Position values and before/after 
> definitions in LR vertical writing mode
> 
> I made a table to ensure we're on the same page.
> 
>           | after | under
> ----------+-------+------
> Japanese  | left  | left
> Chinese   | left  | left
> Mongolian | right | left
> 
> "after" is based on block progression. It indicates different 
> direction because Mongolian has different block progression as you know.
> 
> "under" of underline-position is based on how the UA renders 
> horizontal scripts like English in vertical text flow. You could also 
> say "under" is the "descent" side of the baseline in font 
> terminologies. It is the same for all the three languages because all 
> of them rotates the baseline clockwise.
> 
> So the question really is which terminologies do we want for 
> ruby/emphasis marks positions.
> 
> Is this understandable?
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org [mailto:www-international- 
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Ishii Koji
> Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 11:21 PM
> To: Alan Gresley
> Cc: Stephen Zilles; Richard Ishida; 'fantasai'; www-style@w3.org; 'WWW 
> International'; btmnk0825@gmail.com
> Subject: RE: [css3-ruby] [css3-text] Position values and before/after 
> definitions in LR vertical writing mode
> 
> This isn't logical and I think I should have explained this better, 
> but I
> didn't:
> 
> > You can ask any East Asian developers and I'm pretty sure that most 
> > of them would tell you that "underline" is mapped "left", and "overline"
> > is mapped to "right" in vertical text flow.
> 
> So allow me to try again.
> 
> Assuming we're under the common understanding that we need single word 
> that means one direction in horizontal flow and different direction in 
> vertical flow, why "under=left", not "under=right"?
> 
> It comes from when we need to render horizontal scripts (like English) 
> within the vertical text flow. In that case, we rotate the baseline 
> clockwise by 90 degree and render the script. And in that case, 
> "under=left" makes perfect sense.
> 
> As you pointed out, it may not make sense when you render regular 
> Japanese/Chinese characters which is upright, but as written below, we 
> don't want to call it "side" anyway, so there's no appropriate word 
> for that.
> 
> Given these two conditions, the logical thinking would give us that 
> "under=left" is the best compromise.
> 
> Back to the Mongolian case. As said, and also as Stephen Zilles 
> pointed out, "before=over" and "after=under" in Japanese and Chinese, 
> so we didn't see any issues and didn't care much until we think about Mongolian.
> 
> But in Mongolian, if we define under|over in the sense above, it 
> becomes opposite, and now we found the need to distinguish between 
> block progression and the side of baseline.
> 
> This is why I think we need under|over to describe directions against 
> baseline. I hope this makes sense, but I'm more than happy to discuss 
> further if anything is still unclear, or if I seem logically incorrect.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Koji Ishii
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ishii Koji
> Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 1:58 AM
> To: 'Alan Gresley'
> Cc: Stephen Zilles; Richard Ishida; 'fantasai'; www-style@w3.org; 'WWW 
> International'; btmnk0825@gmail.com
> Subject: RE: [css3-ruby] [css3-text] Position values and before/after 
> definitions in LR vertical writing mode
> 
> Hi Alan, thank you for your reply.
> 
> So you think that we need new pair of words. I'm glad to hear that.
> 
> > So the underline is on the right side and means 'side-line'.
> > Instead of before/after or over/under, have you thought of side or 
> > side-line (like in along-side or be-side) for emphasis?
> 
> This is a great question. Yes, this is one possibility.
> 
> There's one more thing, however, we need to consider. Text flow 
> direction for East Asian is a formatting property. In word processors, 
> it's under "Format" menu. We may change it multiple times during the 
> edit process just like we change fonts. That said, by changing the 
> direction, side-line is automatically changed to underline, or 
> vice-versa. I'm not familiar with RTL languages, but I think this is 
> the biggest difference between East Asian vertical and RTL. Vertical 
> is a formatting property and is likely to be switched multiple times 
> during the edits, while RTL is more fundamental script property (I 
> hope I understand this correctly for RTL :)
> 
> This is the fundamental reason I'd like these naming be "logical". 
> When switching the direction, we don't want to go through the CSS and 
> replace all "side-line" to "underline". We need single word that 
> represents one direction in horizontal flow, and another direction 
> that is most appropriate to be mapped in vertical flow.
> 
> So, "left-side-line" is fine with me if you're fine to call underline 
> as "left-side-line" in horizontal text flow as well, but clearly you 
> don't want to do this, and I don't want to do this either.
> 
> If we knew this years ago, this is a much easier problem. We can 
> discuss and come up with the best words that describe behavior in either text flow.
> The challenge comes when we found the need after we have defined a 
> word for horizontal flow. In the case of underline, we have already 
> used under|over for underline, and we then found the need to put on 
> either side in vertical text flow.
> 
> One option is to stop using under|over, and invent a new pair of 
> words. But it'll break the backward compatibility. So, as a compromise 
> to keep compatibility, we tend to think that "this (left or right) is 
> the direction to call 'under' when flow is switched to vertical". It 
> may not be optimally make sense as you said, but somewhat 
> understandable for us, and works consistent when you switch the direction.
> 
> You may not believe this, but East Asian developers are used to deal 
> with this issue for more than 20 years since the invention of word 
> processors, so we don't feel as weird as you might feel to use "under" meaning "left"
> in vertical text flow. You can ask any East Asian developers and I'm 
> pretty sure that most of them would tell you that "underline" is 
> mapped "left", and "overline" is mapped to "right" in vertical text flow.
> 
> There's slight weirdness left, you're right about that, but the 
> benefit to use single word wins over it. I hope you'll understand 
> that, when you change one property (text flow), and if you have to go 
> through all your CSS files and have to replace all "under" to 
> "left-side", you'll feel something is broken, right?
> 
> So, assuming the use of logical word is understood, I guess we don't 
> have much options:
> 1. Since under|over is already done, keep the same rule in everywhere.
> 2. under|over is considered as an unfixable bug, just leave it and 
> stop spreading it. Invent a new one.
> 
> Uh...I can think of only these two. Within these two, I'd vote 1, 
> since under the constrain to use single word, it's quite difficult to 
> completely feel natural. Whatever word we choose, there will be some 
> compromises. If that's the case, I'd rather choose to remember just 
> one mapping than two, and be consistent within CSS. It's also 
> consistent with what we've been developing for 20 years.
> 
> Does this make sense? If my English is too poor to understand, or if I 
> skipped something important for you to understand, please feel free to 
> ask further. I'm more than happy to explain these things.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Koji Ishii
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Gresley [mailto:alan@css-class.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 6:00 PM
> To: Ishii Koji
> Cc: Stephen Zilles; Richard Ishida; 'fantasai'; www-style@w3.org; 'WWW 
> International'; btmnk0825@gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [css3-ruby] [css3-text] Position values and before/after 
> definitions in LR vertical writing mode
> 
> Ishii Koji wrote:
> > I understand this:
> [snip]
> >>        d. Before/After make sense in both vertical and horizontal
> writing-modes. Over/under does not make (obvious) sense in a vertical 
> writing-mode.
> >
> > Well, I think "make sense or not" depends on who you ask, and is a 
> > little
> weak to do logical discussions, so let's remove this from both.
> 
> 
> Before and after only makes sense in Latin if we have this.
> 
>    The quick brown
>    fox jumped over
>    the lazy fox.
> 
> The examples of Mongolian that I have seen (the attached file from SZ 
> and this one [1]) shows block progression flowing from LTR so in 
> Latin, it would be like this.
> 
>    the lazy fox.
>    fox jumped over
>    The quick brown
> 
> 
> Does before/after over/under make sense? Not really from my perspective.
> 
> 
> > Given pros you listed up, thank you for writing this, I think there 
> > are
> two points to discuss.
> >
> > First, there's a concept we did not recognize until now. And I guess 
> > you
> agreed with it in your point (a). So it's a balance between the 
> complexity and the importance of old Mongolian. We all know that 
> current spec is enough for all languages except old Mongolian. "do we 
> want to add one more level of abstraction just for old Mongolian, or 
> it's just not enough to do that" is probably the question we'd like to discuss.
> 
> Koji, in an earlier message in this thread [2] you wrote this:
> 
>   | The same thing actually happened for Japanese and Chinese.
>   | Underline in Japanese vertical writing is drawn on right
>   | as you might know. In Japanese, it's called "傍線", which
>   | means "side-line", so neither "under" nor "over" is the
>   | correct translations. We chose to name it "overline",
>   | because "over" is correct if you look at alphabet
>   | orientations in vertical text.
> 
> So the underline is on the right side and means 'side-line'. Instead 
> of before/after or over/under, have you thought of side or side-line 
> (like in along-side or be-side) for emphasis?
> 
> 
> [snip]
> > Regards,
> > Koji Ishii
> 
> 
> 1.
> <http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/style/discuss/vertical-
> text/diagrams/mongolian-lr.jpg>
> 2. <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Oct/0001.html>
> 
> --
> Alan http://css-class.com/
> 
> Armies Cannot Stop An Idea Whose Time Has Come. - Victor Hugo

Received on Tuesday, 5 October 2010 01:23:04 UTC