On Mon, 17 May 2004 10:12:50 -0400, John Cowan wrote: > > Andrew C. West scripsit: > > > Thus, if "tb-lr" were supported, your browser would display the > > following HTML line as vertical Mongolian with embedded Ogham reading > > top-to-bottom, but in a plain text editor, the Mongolian and Ogham > > would both read LTR, and everyone would be happy : > > I don't know about that. I wouldn't be too happy trying to read English > with the Latin letters laid out bt-rl and lying on their left sides to boot. > On paper is one thing, but on a non-rotatable screen? I don't think so.
I think you may have misunderstood me. I'm now suggesting that perhaps Ogham shouldn't be rendered bottom-to-top when embedded in vertical text such as Mongolian, but top-to-bottom as is the case with other LTR scripts such as Latin, as shown in the attached screen shot from an HTML page, where the embedded Ogham and Latin text both read LTR down the page if you tilt your head sideways. I don't know whether you're happy reading Latin text as displayed in this example, but this is the normal way of embedding short sections of Latin script (e.g. proper names) in vertical text, and I don't know of any better way to deal with embedding horizontal scripts in vertical text. Likewise, when you embed Mongolian in horizontal text (which is also quite common), you have to tilt your head sideways to read the Mongolian. I don't think there's any way round the head-tilting business when mixing vertical and horizontal scripts. Note that I'm talking about embedding single words or short phrases in text with a different orientation. Of course for long passages of both vertical and horizontal text, each script should be laid out in separate vertical and horizontal blocks. Andrew
<<attachment: vertical.jpg>>
ᠡᠷᠲᠡ ᠤᠷᠢᠳᠠ ᠬ᠌ᠠᠪᠠᠯᠢᠬ᠌ Ogham ᚒᚂᚉᚐᚌᚅᚔ ᠪᠠᠯᠭᠠᠰᠤᠨ ᠳᠤᠷ ᠪᠢᠷᠠᠮᠠᠨ ᠤ ᠬᠠᠮᠤᠭ
