RE: Japanese RTL (was RE: Mongolian (was RE: Syriac and Mongolian

From: Reynolds, Gregg (greynolds@datalogics.com)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2000 - 15:10:00 EST


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roozbeh Pournader [mailto:roozbeh@sina.sharif.ac.ir]
> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2000 1:06 PM
>
> Why don't you use RLO and LRO codes for that?
>
> --roozbeh
>
> On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Reynolds, Gregg wrote:
>
> > Just got back from Tokyo, where I found the following
> examples of RTL
> > Japanese:
> >
...snip...

To get the output to look right the overrides would probably work just fine;
but to me the interesting thing is that, as ftang pointed out in his post,
CJK characters have no intrinsic LR/RL directionality, so strictly speaking
Unicode models them a little bit inaccurately. I hadn't seen this so
clearly illustrated before I found those examples in Japan. I can't help
seeing a LTR/Top-to-Bottom form when I look at a kana character, but
undoubtedly that's because latinate forms have shaped my little eyeballs.
(Also, although LTR horizontal text is very common in Japanese publications,
vertical orientation seemed more common in handwritten materials.
Stationary and postcards, for example, are commonly designed for vertical
writing, and I believe children learn to write vertically. Calligraphic
manuals as well use vertical guidelines.)

--gregg



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