From: Phillips, Addison (addison@lab126.com)
Date: Mon May 16 2011 - 16:34:23 CDT
Ken said (in part):
> And even in Japan, the online editions of newspapers and nearly
> anything else would almost universally be laid out horizontally, because it is just
> so much easier to do.
It would be more accurate to say "because vertical rendering isn't supported". Note that fantasai is one of the editors of CSS3 Writing-Modes [1], which aims to correct that. It remains to be seen what layout is preferred by newpapers (etc.) when vertical presentation is a readily available option. I don't dispute that horizontal layout will probably remain "easier" to do, even in that case. Just that you can't really measure the preference today, given that it's nearly impossible.
Addison
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-writing-modes/
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N WG)
Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
> Behalf Of Ken Whistler
> Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 2:20 PM
> To: fantasai
> Cc: unicode@unicode.org
> Subject: Re: which scripts are written vertically
>
> On 5/12/2011 2:48 PM, fantasai wrote:
> > The interpretation of the question that yields your answer of "only
> > Mongolian and Phags Pa is
> > "Which scripts should only be written vertically?"
>
> Actually, what Andrew said was:
>
> scripts that should preferably be rendered in a vertical orientation
>
>
> Mongolian can be, and in some sense "should be" rendered horizontally, when
> it is mixed inline with text, such as Chinese, laid out left-to-right. But the
> preferred direction for layout of Mongolian by itself (or as the predominant
> component of extended
> text) is clearly top-to-bottom.
>
> >
> > The interpretation of the question I'm interested in is
> > "Which scripts are written vertically in normal (rather than
> > exceptional) use?"
>
> And this depends somewhat on the definition of "normal" and the context of
> layout.
>
> East Asian typography for the 19th century and earlier clearly treated top-to-
> bottom (and lines from left-to-right) as the normal layout convention for
> extended text. And which that entire typographic tradition in East Asia, a
> significant number of other siniform or related scripts could be said to have
> shared that convention.
>
> But both ordinary book publishing (which had to cope with large amounts of
> interspersed Roman material, Western digits, and other material not so
> amenable to vertical layout) and then of course digital typography and
> computers in the latter part of the 20th century, have changed that. Now I
> would say that the "normal"
> layout for all modern East Asian scripts is left-to-right.
>
> One of the main classes of holdout consists of Japanese newspapers in their
> printed editions, which still favor the old conventions. As do small-form-factor
> Japanese popular novels, and many magazines.
> The corresponding content in China has mostly switched over to horizontal
> layout. And even in Japan, the online editions of newspapers and nearly
> anything else would almost universally be laid out horizontally, because it is just
> so much easier to do.
>
> --Ken
>
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