Re: Markup for Language (was: Re: Exemplifying apostrophes)

From: Behnam (behnam.rassi@gmail.com)
Date: Thu May 29 2008 - 07:14:14 CDT

  • Next message: Phillips, Addison: "RE: Markup for Language (was: Re: Exemplifying apostrophes)"

    On 28-May-08, at 11:20 PM, Richard Wordingham wrote:

    > Douglas Davidson wrote on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 6:06 PM
    >
    >> The alternative mechanism for representing this in plain text
    >> would be to insert a bidirectional control character, either RLM
    >> or LRM, at the beginning of each directionally marked paragraph.
    >> These characters are not specifically marks of paragraph base
    >> writing directionality, but their presence at the beginning of a
    >> paragraph would be sufficient to indicate it. However, this is
    >> not the mechanism currently used in the case you mention.
    >
    > They don't quite work. The problem comes with a string of neutrals
    > between a strong LTR and a strong RTL character. Their ordering
    > may depend on the directionality of the paragraph, which may depend
    > on a 'higher level' protocol (e.g. 'always left-to-right').
    > Initial RLM and LRM work if one is free of such a higher level
    > protocol; otherwise one has to stick these marks in whenever
    > neutrals are not bracketed by characters of the same directionality.
    >
    > Richard.

    Now that we are on to things that don't work, I should mention that
    unlike rtl, language identification to the paragraph doesn't work
    either. It should only be applied to a string of characters. A
    paragraph my contain several languages.

    I don't know if this simplifies or complicates the situation but
    there it goes!

    Behnam



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu May 29 2008 - 07:16:58 CDT