Re: [dita-translation] Draft proposal for dir attribute

[Robert D Anderson <robander@us.ibm.com>]

Hello again -- only two short comments on the dir attribute.

1. As the one currently responsible for maintaining and bug-fixing the
DTDs, I would strongly favor making it a universal attribute, rather than
adding it to almost everything.

2. One of the points in the write-up says:
"If the document element does not specify the dir attribute, assume left to
right (ltr). "
The previous bullet says that inline elements use the "specified language's
default text direction". Wouldn't that be the case for the document as
well? That is, if I indicate xml:lang="he-il" on my root topic element,
then everything in the topic (such as tables, notes, and lists) should
default to dir="rtl" unless otherwise specified.

I do not know about the lro and rlo values -- does anybody here have tool
experience that would indicate whether these are still needed? If tools
still require them, then we should probably add them.

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit


                                                                           
             "Gershon L                                                    
             Joseph"                                                       
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                                                                   Subject 
                                       [dita-translation] Draft proposal   
                                       for dir attribute                   
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




Hi all,

Here's my draft proposal for the dir attribute. I'd appreciate review
feedback via email before Monday's SC meeting so we can try closing this
item on Monday to hand off to the DITA TC.

It's a working draft that I hope will invoke input from the SC members.
Based on feedback I receive, I plan to prepare a closer to final draft
before Monday's meeting.

I think the main questions are:
1. Should dir be a universal attribute or not?
2. Should we support dir="ltr|rtl" or dir="ltr|rtl|lro|rlo" as per HTML
4.0?

Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,
Gershon

---
Gershon L Joseph
Member, OASIS DITA and DocBook Technical Committees
Director of Technology and Single Sourcing
Tech-Tav Documentation Ltd.
office: +972-8-974-1569
mobile: +972-57-314-1170
http://www.tech-tav.com
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