[docbook-tc] Re: Bidi in DocBook

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

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/ Francois Yergeau <FYergeau@alis.com> was heard to say:
| Masayasu Ishikawa wrote:
|> Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> wrote:
|> 
|> > Absolutely! And am I correct that the common solution is adding
|> > 
|> >   dir (ltr|rtl|lro|rlo) #IMPLIED
|> > 
|> > to the common attributes?
|> 
|> Exactly.
|
| Not so fast :-)
|
| This is probably right, but I see two issues, one of which arising from my
| total ignorance of DocBook:
|
| 1) I'm not clear (due to my ignorance) that adding dir to the common
| attributes will allow it anywhere it is required.  One needs dir on any
| element that may contain text, and it is also highly desirable to have it on
| some high-level elements where setting it helps establish the directionality
| of a whole document or of substantial parts thereof.  In other words, make
| sure you have dir on <book>, so that you don't have to set it explicitly on
| all the 12345 <paragraph>s of the book :-)

In DocBook, "common attributes" means basically every single element,
from "set" of books all the way down to "phrase" of characters. And
phrases actually nest so you can toggle it back and forth at the
character level if you want.

| Also, having dir in something *too* common may allow it on some elements
| where it doesn't belong, but that's less of a problem.

That is likely to be the case, but I'm content to agree that it's not
a problem. (Having dir on empty elements is a bit pointless, but there
you go.)

| 2) The semantics given to dir in XHTML2 [3] have a few problems, I've just
| reported them to the comments list, see [4].

I'll take your comments into account when I write up the specs for
DocBook, assuming the TC approves the additional attribute.

| I agree that it would be nice if DocBook and XHTML2 had the same markup and
| the same semantics for bidi.

:-)

| François

Thanks!

| [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-attribute-collections#col_Bi-directional
| [4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html-editor/2003JanMar/0069.html

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

- -- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | There is nothing which human courage
http://nwalsh.com/            | will not undertake, and little that
                              | human patience will not endure.--Dr.
                              | Johnson
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