On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 5:58 PM, Phillips, Addison <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello Art, Marcos, and Webapps,
>
> During our teleconference yesterday [1], I was tasked with formally replying
> to this request on behalf of the Internationalization WG.
>
> I would still like to see the 'locale' field restored to the interface. It's
> important to be able to query which locale the widget is running in
> (especially in the face of upcoming ECMAScript internationalization changes)
> so that the caller can match it if necessary.
>
IMHO, navigator.language is already there so we should just rely on
that. We should push HTML5 to standardize it.
> I agree with Marcos's approach to returning the @lang. Marcos concluded with
> this comment:
>
I will add @lang to the Widget interface.
>> >
>> > 3. At runtime, upon getting an attribute from the Widget object
>> (e.g.,
>> > widget.name), you need to display that properly. The case is:
>> >
>> > $("#somePElement).innerHTML = widget.name; //in Arabic
>> >
>> > To display it properly, we need something like the algorithm
>> described in:
>> > http://www.iamcal.com/understanding-bidirectional-text/
>
> Most user-agents have implemented the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (which
> is what Cal is describing), so that isn't the issue, so much as the fact that
> sometimes the algorithm needs a little help. The problem is that the base
> direction of a string is sometimes necessary to get the correct behavior from
> strings.
>
> For excellent illustrations of this, see [2].
>
> Using Unicode Bidi control characters is one way to manage this, but in a
> markup context, the 'dir' attribute is really preferable. If you're going to
> create LocalizedString, it should have both a lang and dir attribute that can
> be queried. Having @dir in P&C will help the Widget engine display the string
> properly too.
>
> I look forward to seeing the resulting spec published. Please let me know if
> you need any assistance from me in making progress.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Addison
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2010/10/13-i18n-minutes.html
> [2] http://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/
>
> Addison Phillips
> Globalization Architect (Lab126)
> Chair (W3C I18N, IETF IRI WGs)
>
> Internationalization is not a feature.
> It is an architecture.
>
>
--
Marcos Caceres
Opera Software ASA, http://www.opera.com/
http://datadriven.com.au
