Title: Re: [dita-translation] Draft proposal for dir attribute
Hi
Kevin,
In my
experience, the authoring tool (if it's 100% Unicode compliant) will display the
multilingual text the same way it will be rendered, so the user would apply the
dir attribute correctly. Of course, if the author is not using an authoring tool
that supports Unicode, he/she will have to guess how to apply the dir attribute,
which probably won't work. Since the industry leading XML editors (XMetaL Author
and Arbortext Editor to name but a few) now support BIDI, I think we can safely
assume that the authors writing Hebrew or Arabic will mark up the direction
correctly, as needed according to what they see in the editor
window.
If
DITA simply does not provide the dir attribute, we essentially remove DITA as an
option for RTL languages. Since we are seeing more and more interest in XML (and
DITA) for Hebrew and Arabic authoring in Israel and other ME countries, I think
we should include dir in DITA 1.1.
Best Regards,
Gershon
From: Farwell, Kevin
[mailto:]
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006
10:48 AM
To: Robert D Anderson;
Cc:
; Bryan Schnabel; Charles Pau; Lieske, Christian; Dave A Schell;
; ; Felix Sasaki; Richard
Ishida; Jennifer Linton; ; ;
; Reynolds, Peter; ; Munshi, Sukumar;
; Yves Savourel
Subject: [Norton
AntiSpam] RE: [dita-translation] Draft proposal for dir
attribute
Hello,
I alluded to this on the phone the other
day, but after thinking about it for a few days I'm getting kind of sour on
directional tags of any kind. The question of whether overrides are needed got
me to thinking the basic idea of directional tags is based on presentation
only and is display tool specific. As such, any tagging method
could either do no good or do harm in all the various output tools
there are. It seems to me that applying tagging according to whether
the content is going to Internet Explorer or Antenna House or
something else is very much against the notion of separating content and
format. Since the two consider bi-directional text differently, tagging for one
doesn't guarantee the text will work in the other.
It is true that the various tools will
handle bi-directional text in almost random ways, so some degree of directional
control is needed, but it should be applied at output time, not stored in the
source XML. For example, in the snippet included in the bi-directional model
page, the first instance of the Hebrew word "Hebrew" displays right-to-left in
IE on Windows and Safari on Mac with no tagging at all because of the Unicode
range the characters are in. The second one does too, but I can't figure out if
that one is supposed to run backwards to demonstrate the difference between
logical and display order and it's just typed in wrong. Otherwise it doesn't
demonstrate much of anything.
Still, punctuation and other characters
must be handled, so control is needed. The only thing that seems to work
consistently is the use of the Unicode directional characters. They don't
necessarily rely on nesting, which has a lot of advantages. Control can be
applied to set of characters before the next neutral character or a span,
depending on what's needed. Relying on spans can run into problems like a period
displaying right-to-left (which isn't so dramatic) at the right end of
a Hebrew word (which is). If the span is just around the period, nothing
happens; if the span is around the word and the period, you might get the same
result because a period is neutral character and is ignored in directional
controls. Also, I suppose just because it's fun, most tools treat
Arabic and Hebrew differently, so the controls can't be the same for all
languages.
Anyway, since it's too late to make a long
story short, I'll just repeat that I think directional control is too messy to
rely on tagging to manage. Authors or translators would have to know what
display tool the content is destined for and also know all the specifics of
the letters, numbers, and punctuation of the language in question and English or
any other left-to-right language. If it's handled at output time, the specific
tools won't necessarily be known, but at least the target output will be. The
chances of getting it right get better in that case.
Kevin
From: Robert D Anderson
[mailto:]
Sent: Thu 3/2/2006 3:57 PM
To:
Cc: ; 'Bryan Schnabel'; Charles
Pau; 'Lieske, Christian'; Dave A Schell; ;
; 'Felix Sasaki'; 'Richard Ishida'; 'Jennifer Linton';
; ; ; Reynolds, Peter;
; Munshi, Sukumar; ; 'Yves
Savourel'
Subject: Re: [dita-translation] Draft proposal for dir
attribute
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"
<gershon@tech-tav
To
.com>
<-open.
org>,
<>,
03/02/2006 01:36
<>,
PM
<>,
<>,
"'Richard
Ishida'"
<>,
Please respond to
<tony.jewtushenko@productinnovator.
gershon
com>,
<>,
"'Lieske,
Christian'"
<>,
"'Jennifer
Linton'"
<>,
<>,
Charles
Pau/Cambridge/IBM@Lotus,
<>,
<>,
"'Felix Sasaki'"
<>,
"'Yves
Savourel'"
<>, Dave
A
Schell/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS,
"'Bryan
Schnabel'"
<>
cc
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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"DirAttr.html" deleted by Robert D
Anderson/Rochester/IBM]
