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Subject: FW: Proposal - dir attribute




-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Ishida [mailto:ishida@w3.org] 
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 4:35 PM
To: gershon@tech-tav.com; dita-translation@lists.oasis-open.org;
mambrose@sdl.com; pcarey@lexmark.com; rfletcher@sdl.com; bhertz@sdl.com;
tony.jewtushenko@productinnovator.com; 'Lieske, Christian'; 'Jennifer
Linton'; 'Munshi, Sukumar'; 'Charles Pau'; dpooley@sdl.com; 'Reynolds,
Peter'; 'Felix Sasaki'; 'Yves Savourel'; 'Dave A Schell'; 'Bryan Schnabel'
Cc: 'Richard Ishida'
Subject: RE: Proposal - dir attribute

Hi Gershon,

[Please forward to lists]

> * Assume a direction of LTR unless otherwise specified, regardless of 
> the xml:lang.

I believe this is the correct approach. Note that this is also the approach
used for HTML/XHTML, so users should be used to that.

This will also maintain interoperability for legacy documents.

There should, of course, be no penalty for actually using dir="ltr" on the
document root element if you want to.

> This means that on an Arabic or
> Hebrew document, the author will have to explicitly set dir on the 
> root element of every document. Users generally expect setting the 
> language gives them the correct directionality for the language.

Given the prevalence of X/HTML, I don't think this will cause real
difficulties.

> Perhaps tools could handle this
> automatically for the user.

I suppose it would certainly be possible, though I think they should propose
to the user what to do rather than silently change the code.

Best regards,
RI



============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gershon L Joseph [mailto:gershon@tech-tav.com]
> Sent: 31 March 2006 10:56
> To: dita-translation@lists.oasis-open.org; mambrose@sdl.com; 
> pcarey@lexmark.com; rfletcher@sdl.com; bhertz@sdl.com; 'Richard 
> Ishida'; tony.jewtushenko@productinnovator.com;
> 'Lieske, Christian'; 'Jennifer Linton'; 'Munshi, Sukumar'; 'Charles 
> Pau'; dpooley@sdl.com; 'Reynolds, Peter'; 'Felix Sasaki'; 'Yves 
> Savourel'; 'Dave A Schell'; 'Bryan Schnabel'
> Subject: RE: Proposal - dir attribute
> 
> Hi Richard,
> 
> Thanks for this feedback. Essentially you're saying directionality is 
> independent of the language. I was trying to reduce the work of 
> authors/translators by inferring an initial direction from the 
> xml:lang attribute. If we remove the initial directionality defaulting 
> based on language, we have two choices:
> 
> * Assume a direction of LTR unless otherwise specified, regardless of 
> the xml:lang. This means that on an Arabic or Hebrew document, the 
> author will have to explicitly set dir on the root element of every 
> document. Users generally expect setting the language gives them the 
> correct directionality for the language. Perhaps tools could handle 
> this automatically for the user.
> 
> * Require the user to set dir on the root element, and have it 
> optional everywhere else.
> 
> I think we should adopt the same approach as we did for xml:lang, in 
> that the attribute is optional, but best practice recommends using it 
> on the root element of each document.
> 
> Treating directionality independently from language definitely 
> simplifies the algorithm, and probably makes it easier for users to 
> understand too.
> 
> Does everyone agree that we should separate directionality from 
> language?
> 
> Any other comments?
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> Gershon
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Ishida [mailto:ishida@w3.org]
> Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 2:45 PM
> To: gershon@tech-tav.com; dita-translation@lists.oasis-open.org;
> mambrose@sdl.com; pcarey@lexmark.com; rfletcher@sdl.com; 
> bhertz@sdl.com; tony.jewtushenko@productinnovator.com;
> 'Lieske, Christian'; 'Jennifer Linton'; 'Munshi, Sukumar'; 'Charles 
> Pau'; dpooley@sdl.com; 'Reynolds, Peter'; 'Felix Sasaki'; 'Yves 
> Savourel'; 'Dave A Schell'; 'Bryan Schnabel'
> Cc: 'Richard Ishida'
> Subject: RE: Proposal - dir attribute
> 
> Hello Gershon,
> 
> [Please forward this email to lists I am unable to reach.]
> 
> I have the following comments on the proposal:
> 
> [1]
> ===
> "1. xml:lang attribute on the document element or, if not specified, 
> default language assumed by the processor.
> Directionality is determined by the Unicode bidirectional algorithm 
> for this language.
> 
> "2.	xml:lang attribute on any element that overrides the inherited
> language. Again, directionality is determined by the Unicode 
> bidirectional algorithm for the specified language."
> 
> xml:lang should be used to declare language only, and not 
> directionality,
> because:
> 
> (a) It does *not* give information about directionality.  
> Direction cannot be inferred from that information.  For example, 
> Azerbaijani is written LTR in Azerbaijan (Latin
> script) but RTL in Iran (Arabic script) - yet it is still 
> xml:lang="az" in both cases. The same applies for non-standard 
> orthographies (for example an IPA transcription of Hebrew in W3C's 
> Speech Synthesis Markup Language should be labelled xml:lang="he", but 
> *not* dir="rtl").
> 
> (b) dir could be used inline within the same paragraph with values of 
> ltr in one place and rtl in another. xml:lang is not designed for this 
> type of use, and so dir is needed anyway - why complicate matters by 
> having two ways to designate directionality, one of which is incapable 
> of actually doing most of the job? Better reduce confusion and scope 
> for error by having simple, clear semantics to the attributes.
> 
> (c) The Unicode bidi algorithm works on the basis of the Unicode 
> character semantics as modified by directional embedding directives 
> (ie. dir), not the language expressed in xml:lang, so 'the Unicode 
> bidirectional algorithm for this language' doesn't make sense.
> 
> (d) In a document that is generally in English you may have a small 
> table that contains only Hebrew or Arabic text.
> Although it would make sense to use xml:lang on the table markup, so 
> that you don't have to repeat it, you would probably *not* want the 
> table columns to flow from right to left (as would usually be the case 
> when using dir="rtl" on the table), since this is an English document. 
> If xml:lang was associated with direction, you would probably have no 
> control over that.  Same goes for list items.
> 
> (e) Note that, once you have established the general directionality of 
> the document, you *don't* have to specify dir for every instance of 
> RTL text.
> If I wanted to display the following HTML text that in memory reads"
> 	<p>He said 'arabic arabic arabic arabic' to me.</p> in any of the 
> major desktop browsers today, no dir is needed for the bidi algorithm 
> to correctly render the text as
> 	<p>He said 'cibara cibara cibara cibara' to me.</p> Although
xml:lang 
> might be useful to identify the extent of the arabic language, that 
> declaration has nothing to do with the correct ordering of characters.
> 
> 
> [2]
> ===
> "Text direction cannot be sufficiently specified by the xml:lang 
> attribute alone"
> 
> So really I'm saying
> 
> "Text direction cannot be sufficiently specified by the xml:lang 
> attribute at all."
> 
> 
> [3]
> ===
> Not sure whether it's worth clarifying this particularly in the text 
> (particularly since you point to my article, where it is explained), 
> but...
> 
> Note that it is not solely to deal with punctuation characters that 
> dir is needed. In fact, in some cases the Unicode RLM and LRM 
> characters are a better choice (note that RLM and LRM are *not* 
> referring to the Unicode characters that mirror the effect of dir!).
> 
> dir is most often needed to ensure the correct order of directional 
> runs, as in the quote 'W3C ,werbeh werbeh' in an overall LTR context, 
> where the bidi algorithm would have put the W3C over to the right.
> 
> 
> [4]
> ===
> "This attribute, when set to "ltr" or "rtl", overrides the 
> default Unicode bidirectional algorithm on neutral characters 
> (such as spaces and punctuation)."
> 
> It doesn't actually override the algorithm - only the rlo and 
> lro do that, and as mentioned above, it's use is not limited 
> to neutral characters.  You could say, instead, "This 
> attribute, when set to "ltr" or "rtl", is intended to resolve 
> cases of ambiguous directionality in bidirectional text."
> 
> 
> [5]
> ===
> "This attribute is usually used in conjunction with the 
> xml:lang attribute, to override the default Unicode 
> bidirectional algorithm that applies to the specified language."
> 
> Again, I would remove this.
> 
> 
> [6]
> ===
> "then if the document element specifies the xml:lang 
> attribute, the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm must be 
> applied to the specified language"
> 
> The bidi algorithm should be applied and work independently 
> of whether or not a language has been declared, since it 
> operates on the basis of the characters in the text.  Again, 
> this and other references to use of xml:lang for direction 
> are inappropriate.
> 
> 
> [7]
> ===
> "Directionality is inferred from the xml:lang value. Every 
> language has an associated directionality (left-to-right or 
> right-to-left, also termed LTR or RTL). For example, for 
> English this default direction is LTR and for Hebrew it's RTL."
> 
> Again, I strongly disagree with this.  I think this should 
> say something
> like:
> 
> "The default direction of a document is LTR.  This can be 
> overridden by use of the dir attribute set to "rtl"."
> 
> Note also that it is currently not defined what should happen 
> if the language of a document is not defined by the author, 
> which is another reason to use the wording I suggest.
> 
> 
> Hope that helps,
> Richard.
> 
> 
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> Internationalization Lead
> W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
> 
> 





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