Re: Alignment of paragraphs with unicode-bidi: plaintext

Sounds good.

Fantasai, do you think it can be specified that way in Writing Modes level
3?

Levi, how difficult would it be to implement in WebKit?

Aharon

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Matitiahu Allouche <matial@il.ibm.com>wrote:

> My opinion, for what it's worth, is that plaintext paragraphs should be
> aligned in sync with paragraph direction for "text-align:start", opposite
> to paragraph direction for "text-align:end", to absolute right or left for
> "text-align:right" and "text-align:left" respectively.
> "text-align:center" should not be a problem.
> "text-align:justify" should not be a problem for lines down to the last
> one in the paragraph. The last one should be handled like for
> "text-align:start".
>
> The advantage of this proposal is that it provides more readability for
> common cases when most paragraphs follow the same direction and span at
> least a few lines.
> For special cases when there are very short paragraphs with alternate
> directions, the author can specify "text-align:right" or "text-align:left",
> so we get the advantages of both solutions (Gecko and Chrome).
>
> Shalom (Regards),  Mati
>       Bidi Architect
>       Globalization Center Of Competency - Bidirectional Scripts
>       IBM Israel
>       Mobile: +972 52 2554160
>
>
>
>
> From:        "Aharon (Vladimir) Lanin" <aharon@google.com>
> To:        Simon Montagu <smontagu@smontagu.org>
> Cc:        public-i18n-bidi@w3.org, "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>
> Date:        31/10/2011 00:27
> Subject:        Re: Alignment of paragraphs with unicode-bidi: plaintext
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> I can see arguments for either approach being better. On the one hand,
> text is more readable aligned to its own start side. On the other hand,
>  paragraphs with alternating alignment, especially when many are less than
> half a line long, can look "jagged", and in extreme cases can result in the
> user not even noticing the paragraphs aligned to the minority side.
>
> Furthermore, we would need to specify how allowing plaintext to base
> alignment on paragraph direction would play with text-align. Is it supposed
> to be limited to "text-align:start" and "text-align:end"?
>
> I would very much like to hear what people think about this.
>
> Aharon
>
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Simon Montagu <*smontagu@smontagu.org*<smontagu@smontagu.org>>
> wrote:
> As far as I can see, there is no explicit specification in CSS Writing
> Modes Module Level 3 of what effect "unicode-bidi: plaintext" should have
> on the default alignment of paragraphs.
>
> When implementing "unicode-bidi: plaintext" for Gecko, I took it for
> granted that each paragraph in the element would determine its
> directionality by the heuristic in the UBA, and then determine the start of
> the line box depending on the directionality of the paragraph.
>
> I just noticed that recent versions of Chrome behave differently:
> directionality is determined for each paragraph separately, but alignment
> is determined by the first paragraph in the element, and all subsequent
> paragraphs get the same alignment.
>
> As I said, there doesn't seem to be anything in the spec to say which
> approach is correct. I think the behaviour in Gecko is more intuitive and
> useful, but then I would, wouldn't I? Either way, it is probably worth
> adding something to the spec to make it explicit.
>
>
>
>