Re: [WSG] No. abbreviation glyph
Ben Buchanan wrote: Think about the heart symbol. It's in UTF as black hearts suit or something. But people use it to say I [heart] unicode. Would it make any sense to read out I black hearts suit unicode? The symbol has been used to indicate the word love. actually I wouldn't use U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT to represent love as it is what its name suggests, the symbol used to represent one of the four suits commonly used on playing cards. Its name and position in the Misc. symbols block indicate that. If you wanted to use a symbol to represent love you would use a different unicode character, maybe U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in the Dingbats block or one of the alternative Dingbats. So what I'm getting at is that the name of the symbol may not be the same as the concept it communicates. Do people truly write No. 12 Somewhere Street meaning Numero 12 Somewhere Street? No, they mean Number 12 Somewhere Street (well, in English-speaking nations anyway). In the same way, they might say #12 Somewhere Street... do they want people to say right, so you live at hash twelve Somewhere Street? From a purist's point of view, people should never say I [heart] whatever since that's not what the Black Hearts Suit symbol is for. But we know that people do use it this way and will keep using it this way. Hence my opinion that there should be an optional method for declaring a specific interpretation of the symbol (character, glyph, entity wossname). I hope that's a clearer statement of what I was driving at :) cheers, Ben -- Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator Vicnet, Public Libraries and Communications State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au Ph. 3-8664-7430 Fax: 3-9639-2175 http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.libraries.vic.gov.au/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***begin:vcard fn:Andrew Cunningham n:Cunningham;Andrew org:State Library of Victoria;Vicnet adr:;;328 Swanston Street;Melbourne;VIC;3000;Australia email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] title:Research and Development Coordinator tel;work:+61-3-8664-7430 tel;fax:+61-3-9639-2175 tel;cell:0421-450-816 note;quoted-printable:Current projects:=0D=0A= =0D=0A= Open Road=E2=80=94http://www.openroad.net.au/=0D=0A= =0D=0A= MyLanguage=E2=80=94http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/=0D=0A= =0D=0A= WoVG Multilingual portal research project=E2=80=94http://www.mylanguage.v= ic.gov.au/wovgdemo/ x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/ version:2.1 end:vcard
Re: [WSG] Re: Lists and DIR=RTL
Hi Thierry all I'm saying is that without unicode-bidi property, images are nuetral. With unicode-bidi set to embed or bidi-override images are strong. Added to that you may also have any UI mirroring built into the browser in question, thrown into the mix. And your image tags aren't language neutral. They have alt tags with English text. I would assume that that would create a LTR embedding level for the images, and whitespace between images would inherit appropraite directionality. BUt as to what each browser actually does ... Compare http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/test/with_unicode-bidi_en.html and http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/test/without_unicode-bidi_en.html with http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/test/with_unicode-bidi_ar.html and http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/test/without_unicode-bidi_ar.html For the Arabic pages, IE and Firefox behave the same, and display as expected. This is the normal case for RTL display. For your English example, IE and Firefox exhibit variant behaviour. Not surprising since its an artificial example unlikely to be seen in real life situations. Although begs the question as to what would happen in a fully bilingual environment. I'd assuem form the beaviour in English tests, that Firefox treats teh directionality of the alt tag as significant, while IE just uses UI mirroring principles for the images when the list-items have a status of embedded. Although I could be reading more into this than there is. You can build a case to say that either browser is displaying the page correctly, depending on what you think the page should display as. Andrew Thierry Koblentz wrote: Andrew Cunningham wrote: Thierry Koblentz writes: Regardless of the script used, without unicode-bidi, one does get different results across browsers . In my example, FF keeps all lists LTR while IE shows the second one RTL and you you'll get different results again if you used Arabic characters in the example. To create a test page in Latin script to test RTL properties is problematic. For instance you need unicode-bidi, which wouldn't be necessary in a purely Arabic or Hebrew page. Andrew, I'm not saying that different scripts won't add an additional level of embedding, I'm just saying that we *already* have a difference across browser using images *only* (no script) and *without* the use of unicode-bidi. --- Regards, Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** -- Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator Vicnet, Public Libraries and Communications State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au Ph. 3-8664-7430 Fax: 3-9639-2175 http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.libraries.vic.gov.au/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***begin:vcard fn:Andrew Cunningham n:Cunningham;Andrew org:State Library of Victoria;Vicnet adr:;;328 Swanston Street;Melbourne;VIC;3000;Australia email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] title:Research and Development Coordinator tel;work:+61-3-8664-7430 tel;fax:+61-3-9639-2175 tel;cell:0421-450-816 note;quoted-printable:Current projects:=0D=0A= =0D=0A= Open Road=E2=80=94http://www.openroad.net.au/=0D=0A= =0D=0A= MyLanguage=E2=80=94http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/=0D=0A= =0D=0A= WoVG Multilingual portal research project=E2=80=94http://www.mylanguage.v= ic.gov.au/ x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/ version:2.1 end:vcard
[WSG] Re: Lists and DIR=RTL
Thierry Koblentz writes: Actually, using images to explain this behavior makes perfect sense. These would say CSS in LTR *and* RTL img alt=C /img alt=S /img alt=S / These would say CSS in LTR but SSC in RTL img alt=C / img alt=S / img alt=S / one of the issues with your example is that you set the unicode-bidi attribute to embed. If you didn't have the unicode-bidi set to embed, and you use latin script characters in your test, you'd get different results in soem browsers compared to the same markup with arabic characters. From memory CSS 2.1 treats images as nuetral. if you set it to embed or bidi-override then images have a strong directionality. Wouldn't surprise me if you see differences between browsers. Andrew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Re: Lists and DIR=RTL
Thierry Koblentz writes: Again, I don't think this is all about latin characters vs. arabic characters. It is. Latin characters are strong LTR, Arabic characters are strong RTL. A string of Latin characters Regardless of the script used, without unicode-bidi, one does get different results across browsers . In my example, FF keeps all lists LTR while IE shows the second one RTL and you you'll get different results again if you used Arabic characters in the example. To create a test page in Latin script to test RTL properties is problematic. For instance you need unicode-bidi, which wouldn't be necessary in a purely Arabic or Hebrew page. Its necessary in your example in some browsers because you're mixing embeding levels, placing a LTR embeding level within an RTL mebeding level, and in the case of displaying a block element as an inline element within those mixed embeding levels some browsers need some additional information. If everything was just RTL that wouldn't be necessary. In the CSS 2.1 documentation: For the 'direction' property to affect reordering in inline-level elements, the 'unicode-bidi' property's value must be 'embed' or 'override'. and the definition for the embeded value is: If the element is inline-level, this value opens an additional level of embedding with respect to the bidirectional algorithm. The direction of this embedding level is given by the 'direction' property. Inside the element, reordering is done implicitly. This corresponds to adding a LRE (U+202A; for 'direction: ltr') or RLE (U+202B; for 'direction: rtl') at the start of the element and a PDF (U+202C) at the end of the element. http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html#direction In your example the doument and parent elemnet is RTL and you want each list-item to display inline as RTL, so that the order of the inline elements is form right to left. No problem if the text is Arabic, Hebrew or Syriac, etc. But throw in strings of LTR text which creates another embedng level, some browsers require the unicode-bidi. I created four test pages 2 with English text, 2 with Arabic text. One of each pair had unicode-bidi: embed; while the other two documents did not have this property set. In Firefox, display between the two English pages differed. While display of the two Arabic pages were the same. I didn't test a mixed environment. If you want to test a user interface for its behaviour in an RTL environment, I'd suggest that the tests should be in a writing script that is displayed RTL. Andrew Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator Vicnet State Library of Victoria Australia *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Son of Suckerfish - right to left
Dear Ido If you want to mark up a whole page as RTL, you should put the dir attibute on the HTML element and not on the BODY element. The W3C'S Internationalization Best Practices recommends adding dir=rtl to the html tag any time the overall document direction is right-to-left. Internet Explorer has been developed so that appltying the dir attribute to the HTMl or BODY elements has different effects on rendering and UI mirroring. Accoring to microsoft documentation: For html dir=rtl the following behavior can be expected: * The OLE/COM ambient property of the document is set to AMBIENT_RIGHTTOLEFT. • The document direction can be toggled through the document object model (DOM) (document.direction=ltr/rtl). • An HTML Dialog will get the correct extended windows styles set so it displays as a RTL dialog on a Bidi enabled system. • If the document has vertical scrollbars, they will be on the left side if dir=rtl. If the dir=rtl attribute is placed on the BODY instead of the HTML element: • The OLE/COM ambient property for the document will not reflect the direction on the BODY. • The ability to toggle the document's direction will be lost, because the body's direction is explicitly set. • Dialog window frames and captions will not reflect the direction of the BODY. • Vertical scrollbars will be reflect the direction assigned to the body, not the document. I suspect that putting the dir tagg on the BODY element will have implications for UI mirroring in a rnage of contexts. Andrew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** begin:vcard fn:Andrew Cunningham n:Cunningham;Andrew org:State Library of Victoria;Vicnet adr:;;328 Swanston Street;Melbourne;VIC;3000;Australia email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] title:Research and Development Coordinator tel;work:+61-3-8664-7430 tel;fax:+61-3-9639-2175 tel;cell:0421-450-816 note;quoted-printable:Current projects:=0D=0A= =0D=0A= Open Road=E2=80=94http://www.openroad.net.au/=0D=0A= =0D=0A= MyLanguage=E2=80=94http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/=0D=0A= =0D=0A= WoVG Multilingual portal research project=E2=80=94http://www.mylanguage.v= ic.gov.au/ x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/ version:2.1 end:vcard
[WSG] Re: Semantics - (was : class names and IDs (which was p:first-line))
Designer writes: I agree. The thing is, if top, middle and bottom are OK, surely left and right are too? Where do you draw the line? (my own view is that they probably are OK - like Patrick said, pragmatism is the order of the day here, surely?) In my current projects i try to avoid labels such as left' and right and use something more functional. Using an id of #left or #right in a template requiring UI mirroring becomes rather odd with #left displaying on the right o the page and #right displaying on the left of the page ;) Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator Vicnet State Library of Victoria Australia *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Re: Semantics - (was : class names and IDs (which was p:first-line))
Tony Crockford writes: Agreed, for general elements, but what about for images within a column of text.. the placement of an image within a column would still be subject to mirroring in theory, so i'd nbe inclinde to avoid descriptors of left and right. the concept of left and right in terms of floats, margins and padding is problematic enough in templates designed for multilingual environments that I'd avoid references to left and right anywhere else. Andrew Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator Vicnet State Library of Victoria Australia *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] International Layout in CSS
Vertical text layout will be a feature of CSS3
(http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/).
Microsoft ages ago played with vertical text for Han Ideographs in
Internet Explorer 5.5 ( I haven't played with it in more recent
versions). Have a look at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnie55/html/verticaltext.asp
for details.
Most likely the current implementation by Microsoft will not match up
with what CSS3 will do.
Until (and if) CSS3 is widely implemented, I'd steer away from using
vertical text.
The key difference between IEs implementation and CSS3 is the concept of
block progression. IE IE 5.5 implementation was only designed for one
scenario (Han ideographs). Doesn't take account of other writing scripts
that use vertical layout, but different progression, e.g. Mongolian.
Richard Ishida (W3C) has given presentations on what CSS3 will have in
the way of internationalization features. Have a look at
http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/css3-text/
Andrew
Tee G. Peng wrote:
I was working on a pro bono Chinese site and is asked to layout a
certain section text vertically, read from right to left - this is the
old format which is still be used in Taiwan for books. My first
reaction is it can't be done practically, for CSS playground maybe, but
I am told I can use layout-flow: vertical-ideographic. I never heard
of this until today, so I did a search on google and paid a visit to
W3C. Holy moly! there really has layout-flow: vertical- ideographic, so
I did a simple test, but it doesn't work.
Browser tested: Safari and Firefox.
What did I missing?
I simply add an id
#vert {layout-flow:vertical-ideographic; float: right; width: 200px;
height: 300px}
According to this page:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-i18n-format-19990127/
Is it still a working draft that no browser will support?
Thanks!
tee
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State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street
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Australia
andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au
Ph. 3-8664-7430
Fax: 3-9639-2175
http://www.openroad.net.au/
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Re: [WSG] Tables - you can still use them in web design article
Hi all, Stevio wrote: - Original Message - From: Joseph R. B. Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 4:31 AM Those who haven't arrived at this place yet and are clinging to tables and using minor display issues as an excuse, you're really in for a treat when you finally make the switch. Hi Joseph, How do you know what display issues another designer has and whether they are major or minor? Also, how do you know a designer has not made the switch, examined the options, and still come to the conclusion that in a particular situation a table is more appropriate? I tend to use CSS for layout, and haven't used table based layout for a long time. That said, the real weak point of CSS layouts and the strength of table based layouts is that tables will handle UI mirroring while CSS currently doesn't. Andrew ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Tables - you can still use them in web design article
Paul Novitski wrote: Please elucidate. It seems to me that you'd have to reverse the sequence of table markup going from LTR to RTL, and while you could do the same with CSS there's also the potential to reverse float direction and keep the markup the same, n'est ce pas? If the page is LTR, then the first column of a table is left most, with each following column to the right of the preceeding column. In a RTL page, the browser will render the first column on the right of the page and each subsequent column will be rendered to the left of the preceeding column. The primary issue here is the direction of the bidi embedding level the table is in. In a sense the order of columns in a table is direction neutral, ie they inherit the direction of the page (or parent element). The default direction being LTR. This ability can be used to develop a template which is direction neutral, ie the same template can be used irregardless of directionality of the page. In CSS, it is more complex. Yes you can swap the direction of any floated elements, but you'd also have to swap any elements that have left or right margins or paddings defined, etc. The easiest approach is to have two separate css files which are nearly identical except for page orientation, and use the apporpriate version for the appropriate languages. Essentially menats that the CMS or scripts in use need to be developed to understand text direction and how to handle it appropriately when generating html pages. Alternatively, all CSS that has direction implications could be striped out of an external CSS file and embeded in the scripting languages generating the HTML, allowing the scripts generating the HTML to insert appropriate CSS rules based on the directionality of the page. Either way, more complex and less clean that just using a well implemented table layout. The key issue is that CSS layouts are defined in terms of measurements to the left or right of something, and thus are not direction neutral. It is no big deal if you are just handling languages in one writing script or a set of writing scripts that share directionality. Andrew ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Tables - you can still use them in web design article
Kevin Futter wrote: On 17/5/06 10:57 AM, Andrew Cunningham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This ability can be used to develop a template which is direction neutral, ie the same template can be used irregardless of directionality of the page. irregardless? Surely you jest ... LOL, as to jesting? Yes AND no A poorly internationalized and over brudened table layout may have problems with UI mirroring. But it is possible to use tables to design a layout that will support UI mirroring. With CSS on the other hand ... I prefer templates and layouts i can use with any language. Today I might need Amharic and Pashto, tomorrow maybe Assyrian, Urdu, Khmer, Lao and Yoruba. Good use of CSS is essential to developing well internationalized web sites. Unfortunately, from the point of view of developing internationalized user interfaces, there's a lot lacking in CSS 2.1. The very idea that Andrew ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Tables - you can still use them in web design article
Joseph R. B. Taylor wrote: Is it not true, that the complete separation will offer the greatest flexibility that is part of the bigger picture of the information on the internet and it's foreseeable future? I'd agree with you. CSS handling the presentation layer of information is part of this future. Tables handling presentation disrupts this separation. although in certain areas CSS has a long way to go. CSS3 will be an improvement when it eventuates, and if it gets enough support in web browsers. Andrew ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Web pages needed for testing
For certain training, I tend to sue DIMA's web site (http://www.dimia.gov.au) If you really, really wnat some fun, try entring at http://www.dimia.gov.au/settle/booklets/booklets.htm and follow some of the links. I really love pages like http://www.dimia.gov.au/settle/booklets/select/som.htm ;) Andrew ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Web Standards Speech
Lachlan Hardy wrote: May I suggest dirty sackcloth, preferably hessian? It really adds that 'martyr to the cause' feel to your standards presentations or will that be mistaken for the religious fanatic look? Andrew ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
[WSG] OS detection.
Hi everyone, I have what many be a very odd question. Please bear with me. At the moment i'm in the early stages of planning a digital library project targeting African languages. One aspect that has me wondering at the moment, is ways of selecting or specifiying appropriate fonts in CSS. On Windows Vista I'd use the core Times New Roman, Tahoma or Arial fonts, and likewise slect appropriate fonts for the Mac and Linux. The crux of the issue is the I'd want to use Times New Roman, Arial or Tahoma in a browser on Windows Vista, but avoid those fonts on any other version of Windows, since the core fonts would be inappropriate fonts on older versions of Windows. If I was able to rely on the font linking technologies built into the browsers, i'd just skip the whole process of specifying a font at all. Unfortunately in this case it would not be practical to do so. Would there be a mechanism using javascript to detect the operating system the user accessing the web site was using and switch stylesheets based on OS ? I.E OS dedection scripts rather than a browser detection script? Andrew ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
