Re: [css3-writing-modes] A report from a meeting w/Japanese publishing group

Tokushige Kobayashi wrote:

> Yes, I understand your position, but I am opposite for the concept.
> The intrinsic direction of all characters shall be upright. Only the
> direction of punctuation and graphic symbols may be sideways.
> 
> The sideway of latin alphabet in vertical text is bad writing manner
> in Japanese text.

Interesting.  The general rule of thumb in Japan actually seems to be
based on the length of the Latin string, once the string gets beyond a
certain length, it's always displayed rotated.  So "iPhone" typically
appears upright but "iSoftbank" appears rotated.  I'm not arguing
that's aesthetically better, just that it's a common pattern.

In the past I argued that CSS should allow a way to customize the
default orientation.  For example,

@text-orientation {
  upright: u+2000:24ff;  /* all symbols are upright */
}

Elika and Koji felt this wasn't necessary at this level.

Regards,

John Daggett