Re: [docbook-apps] RTL/LTR directional tags

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org>]

On Mon, 2004-02-16 at 14:13, David Tolpin wrote:

> Salam,
> 
Salamain ;)

> this should not be your problem, but the problem of a browser
> used to render the generated HTML documents. Modern browsers 
> handle bidirectionality automatically; Unicode contains all 
> data necessary to correctly display Hebrew, Arabic and other
> scripts. 
> 

Not quiet. For example, we write our documents in SGML/DocBook (trying
to move to XML here). Unfortunately, when we generate the HTML output,
it is all in LTR. The browser doesn't know any better. Mozilla, yes..
IE, the whole gang. We then have to run scripts against the generated
HTML files to add meta tags to set the proper directions.

The problem is that when you have a table, which may intermix RTL and
LTR languages.. then the browser is confused. We cannot rely on browsers
at this point.

> The only case when you would want explicit direction marks is when
> you want something to be transcribed in an unusual direction, that is,
> English or Georgian in RTL, or Arabic in LTR. But it does not seem
> to be your case.
> 

But it is!

> 
> So just output your text without thinking about writing-modes, 
> a good browser (Mozilla for example) will handle it just right.
> The same holds for XSL FO output.

Speaking of which, XSL FO pdf output comes out as garbage. But that's
another topic (I wanted to know how to explicitly add fonts) ;)

Regards
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
| Mohammed Elzubeir    | Visit us at:                 |
|                      |  http://www.arabeyes.org/    |
| Arabeyes Project     | Homepage:                    |
| Unix the 'right' way |  http://elzubeir.fakkir.net/ |
-------------------------------------------------------