Re: [css-text] I18N-ISSUE-331: No kashida style or relationship to styles 'distribute' and 'inter-word'

This is the most useful reference in English on Arabic text justification
that I have come across:

http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-2/tb87benatia.pdf

James


On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 4:59 AM, Phillips, Addison <addison@lab126.com>wrote:

> Some comments follow.
>
> >
> > There was a request in Tucson F2F[1] that:
> > * “auto” automagically does the best justification for the content
> language
>
> Which is fine. Note that our comment is that *only* the "auto"
> justification selects "kashida" (if any do).
>
> > * Define values only when multiple choices of justification behavior are
> > required within one language
>
> Which is also "okay", insofar as it goes. But some of these justification
> forms are ill-suited to certain scripts or languages. And kashida certainly
> meets this criterion: several languages might need to select it.
>
> > * That behavior should be described so that implementers who do not know
> the
> > language can implement in an interoperable way and with our knowledge,
> the
> > “kashida” value did not meet the criteria.
>
> Kashida is not currently well-described in English, so far as I know. I
> have it on good authority that there is at least one book in Persian on the
> topic. I am unaware (having neither seen the book nor the ability to read
> Persian) of whether this would apply generally or only to that language
> family, or how well this document succeeds at its task.
>
> So I agree that kashida does not meet this criterion presently. But, since
> you mention it in the text (you even have an example of Tasmeem rendering
> it), it seems like an oversight to mention it and even encourage it in
> "auto" but not do say anything further (such as whether it is on or off in
> one of the other modes or if those modes).
> >
> > The discussion started to cut values down to “auto | distribute”[2],
> then we had
> > information that “none” and “inter-word” meet the criteria.
>
> I agree that these all meet the criteria you established. The question we
> asked is what the effect of some of the other keywords (notably inter-word)
> would be on a kashida implementation (as well as whether a kashida type or
> types could be created later).
> >
> > Can you give such information for “kashida”?
>
> See above. We would like to, but are not in a position to.
>
> Addison
>