RE: Multiple Directions (was: Re: Coptic/Greek (Re: Phoenician))

From: E. Keown (k_isoetc@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri May 14 2004 - 12:22:09 CDT

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            Elaine Keown
            Tucson

    Dear Peter,

    > > > *plain text* standard is the bidirectional
    > > > algorithm, which sorts out how a (horizontal)
    > > > *line* of text is laid out when text of opposite
    > > > directions

    In the 'old' Unicode 3.0 there was a one-line note on
    doing boustrophedon near the bidi material.
    Boustrophedon is needed not 'just' in Archaic Greek,
    but also in some periods of Egyptian and in some early
    Semitic stuff.

    For a small percentage of early Semitics stuff, it
    would be convenient to be able to automatically
    reverse the direction in a database, so the retrieval
    algorithm could look at 'both directions.'

    Is there a larger 'boustrophedon' note in Unicode 4.0?
     Is there any interest in expanding the bidi algorithm
    to definitely cover all possible RTL - LTR
    boustropheda (plural?) ?

    I assume that there is *no* complete list online of
    all possible writing direction configurations.

    The discussion so far on the list doesn't appear to me
    to cover every possibility....my impression is that
    there are probably sub-varieties of boustrophedon and
    of the vertical material....sometimes individual
    characters get re-aligned, turned a certain number of
    degrees, and maybe sometimes they don't.

    Elaine

            
                    
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