https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168782

--- Comment #2 from Eyal Rozenberg <[email protected]> ---
(In reply to Jonathan Clark from comment #1)

> They haven't disappeared. Layout direction is a property of pages, so the
> vertical-first writing modes can only be set on page styles. Paragraph
> direction, on the other hand, exists for the purposes of the Unicode BiDi
> Algorithm; lr-tb and rl-tb are the only meaningful values.

So, that gives me the explanation of what's happening. But - I don't think this
is an acceptable situation, from a user's perspective.

First and foremost - its a property with the same name and 3 of the 5 possible
values are the same. Users cannot be expected to interpret the meaning of "text
direction" differently. If the page-level text direction was set to
"Right-to-Left (Vertical)", then the paragraph text direction would be expected
to be the same thing. If the user were to see only "(vertical)" options, or
only "(horizontal)" options - they would understand that the other two options
are currently not available, since the paragraph is necessarily-vertical or
necessarily-horizontal. That would be less confusing, or perhaps I should say
better adhering to the principle of least astonishment[1].

Second - there is no inherent reason why vertical-vs-horizontal writing mode
aspect would only be a property of pages rather than of paragraphs. It is quite
possible to render one paragraph of text in tblr, and a subsequent paragraph in
lrtb, for example. Doing so might not even necessitate the next paragraph being
on another page: that would depend on how far along the page the first
paragraph's text would reach. Now, sure, it may be the case that LO, or ODF,
don't support this - but that lack of support does not translate into a user
assuming that paragraph direction should hide the very existence of a vertical
vs horizontal aspect.

So, bottom line, I think I'm asking, for now, that the values in the PS dialog
text direction will have the same parenthetical qualifier as in the PgS dialog;
or, alternatively, that we include some label indicating that the directions
are vertical-first.


[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

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