DOCBOOK: Re: Attributes for text direction and language

[Jens Emmerich <Jens.Emmerich@encorus.com>]

Tsuguya Sasaki <ts@ts-cyberia.net> writes:

> > > 1) What is the DocBook equivalent, if any, of the HTML attribute
> > > DIR for specifying in which direction, i.e. left-to-right or
> > > right-to-left, text should be rendered within the containing
> > > element?
> >
> > I don't  know of one.  Wouldn't the direction be determined
> > by the lang?
> 
> You are right. But according to my experience of writing the mixture
> of LTR and RTL (mostly Hebrew) texts in HTML/XHTML, there are
> cases where I have to specify the text direction explicitly by using the
> span element and the dir attribute.
> 
> For example, if I write rtl_text + numbers without any mechanism
> specifying the text direction, they aren't displayed in this logical
> order but in the reverse physical order of numbers + rtl_text. This also
> happens in DocBook documents.
> 
> Since I don't find any element and attribute in DocBook corresponding
> to span and class respectively in HTML, I would also like to ask you
> mavens if there is some way to have the same effect. Or am I missing
> something?

Have a look at <phrase> and look at the various common attributes,
e.g. "role".  Together they should serve your needs.

Jens