Re: I18N-ISSUE-163: Flexbox specification needs examples using different writing modes [CSS3-flexbox]

Well, the normative text certainly requires the mental gymnastics, and there's no way to avoid that. The examples should show why they're necessary and how they pay off in real life. It's good to start with examples that are easy to understand for the readers, but there should also be some that show more complex or unusual (for the average reader) situations.

In the new example, I'd recommend sticking with numbered boxes, since not all readers can read Japanese and know Iroha (I had to look up the latter). Also, "English" and "Japanese" are not good labels, as left-to-right writing was standardized by the Greek and is also used by Japanese, while top-to-bottom writing came to Japan from China.

Thanks,
Norbert


On Jul 11, 2012, at 15:04 , Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Internationalization Core Working
> Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org> wrote:
>> I18N-ISSUE-163: Flexbox specification needs examples using different writing modes [CSS3-flexbox]
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/163
>> 
>> Raised by: Norbert Lindenberg
>> On product: CSS3-flexbox
>> 
>> The biggest internationalization issue in the Flexbox specification appears to be handling of the different writing directions used for different languages. The specification is clearly designed to support this; directions are specified abstractly in terms of the start and end, before and after directions of the current writing mode. I didn't see any issues with this in the normative text.
>> 
>> The examples, however, all seem to assume a left-to-right lines, top-to-bottom blocks writing mode. Since many readers won't be familiar with other writing modes, it would be helpful to have some examples showing the effect of given settings in other writing modes. In particular, example 5 should show the rendering of content with the different flex-flow settings at least with top-to-bottom lines, right-to-left blocks, maybe also in right-to-left lines, top-to-bottom blocks mode.
> 
> I previously had more writing-modes in Example 5, but it ended up
> being more confusing than it was worth.  We changed the examples to
> all be English writing-modes so that we could illustrate the keywords
> without requiring additional mental gymnastics.
> 
> Instead, we added a note immediately following the example talking
> about other writing modes and their effect on flexbox directions.
> We've also just now extended that note to have a visual example
> comparing English to Japanese with the same flex-flow value.
> 
>> Comments should be phrased first in abstract terms, as in the comment for the second code snippet in that example, not in concrete terms, as in the third code snippet. Example 12 should be changed to not equate "vertical flex container" with "flex-flow: column".
> 
> We've just removed Example 12 entirely.  It was redundant now that we
> have the much better diagram immediately above it, and it wasn't a
> very good example to start with.
> 
> ~TJ
>

Received on Wednesday, 11 July 2012 23:27:34 UTC