On 24/03/2004 12:31, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
...
Besides, this is really a very, very marginal concern. All real world
exemplars of boustrophedon are *not* bidirectional text, and all
real world exemplars of bidirectional text are not laid out in
boustrophedon. Why? Well, because it would be a stupid thing to
do and give readers and writers headaches.
I wonder if there are in fact any cases where fixed direction text is
embedded in boustrophedon. For example, when numbers or foreign loan
words are written in boustrophedon texts, do they have fixed LTR or RTL
directionality? I don't think that would necessarily be stupid, and just
because it seems stupid to us that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
(There are many things in non-western scripts which seem stupid to me,
and there are doubtless many things in Latin script which seem stupid to
non-westerners.) If this does happen, there may need to be ways to
indicate this - that is, if in future any boustrophedon text is defined
in Unicode. Indeed, whether or not it happens someone needs to define
the expected appearance of small groups of non-boustprohedon characters
appearing in a boustrophedon text, even if vice versa is less of a problem.
--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
