Handling western & indian digits

[r12a]

https://w3c.github.io/iip/gap-analysis/deva-gap.html#numbers

Generally Latin Numerals are acceptable in Devanagari text. Most of the user community identifies with them. However, there could be cases where certain web-pages would prefer to have numerals in Devanagari to cater to mono-lingual (mono-script rather) readers. This is particularly required for input types number and date. It would be useful if the input type values are augmented with the script mnemonics e.g. number_deva or date_deva instead of changing it for entire page through some locale setting. There could be cases where a user may require both kinds of numbering in the same web-page.

We discussed this during the telecon, and concluded that more detail was needed for this section.

There are two main scenarios here, which are probably best addressed separately:

1. can a form control on a web page handle input of numbers using either western or indian digits?
2. can web pages produce numbers for a given location using either kind of digit where needed?

[miloush]

• You sacrifice users that cannot read native digits for users that cannot read western numbers. While Devanagari digits might be prolific to justify that, the situation with Tamil digits is different (see e.g. numbers on buses)
• Do you expect the actual submitted form data to be western or Indic digits? If western, that sounds like digit substitution feature to me which is already in control of users on the OS level (at least in Windows). If you create separate substitution layer, which one should have a priority?
• Do you expect to pass the Indic digits to the printer when printing the web page?
• The user is currently in charge of number and date formats. Are these input type values expected to change the formats as well, e.g. 100,000 to 1,00,000, or will they result in numbers like १००,०००?
• While at least INSCRIPT keyboards contain actual Indic digits through Ctrl+Alt keys, I have yet to see a keyboard that has them labelled. Not only might be confusing for the user to have a keyboard type something different than what is on the key label, but they actually need to be able to read the western digits on the keyboard in order to input any type of digits.

Are there any requests from users or estimates about how many people are expected to be in need to input numbers on a computer but unable to read western digits?

[r12a]

A note on terminology. The term 'arabic numerals' is somewhat ambiguous. Unicode calls the digits 0-9 'european numerals', to avoid that confusion. However, they were actually invented in the western arabic world, which is why i used the term 'western digits'. Unicode also refers to 'indic numerals', accompanied by which indic script is being considered, to refer to digits in Bengali, Hindi, and Tamil – as opposed to 'arabic-indic numerals', which are those used with the Arabic script in western regions. I could go on.

It's all a bit of a nomeclatural mess, really. I suggest that we adopt some simple terms and use them consistently during this discussion. How about this:

• 0-9 western digits/numerals
• ०-९ devanagari digits/numerals
• ০-৯ bengali digits/numerals
• ௦-௯ and ௰ etc. tamil digits/numerals

[miloush]

@r12a might be worth unifying with Unicode, taking into account other numeral systems on both the "west" and "east" or just creating another discussion around the nomenclature.

Edited above as per your suggestion.

[akshatsj]

Thank you Richard, this kind of separation of scenarios is really helpful.

Here is my take on both the scenarios put forth by Richard:

1. Can a form control on a web page handle input of numbers using either western or indian digits? Assuming when you say 'handle' you mean 'displays properly', I guess the form control is able to do this with most of the Indian language digits (sorry for the newer term :)). If 'handle' meant understanding the numerical value of the individual digits and perform some mathematical operation (which I do not think you meant), that support may not be there.

2. Can web pages produce numbers for a given location using either kind of digit where needed? I read this scenario as: A web-developer wants to integrate date input type into his web-page. He can simply use and have the date-picker which will show him a properly implemented date-picker with Western numerals. The question is: If he wants to have the same functionality with date input type showing the numerals in say Devanagari (or any script other than latin), does he have a way of specifying that through standard HTML specification. This is doable in custom-implementation but the point is, can it be natively supported through a specification? I think this support is not there and may need to be added. I could be missing some locale related specification here which might be able to extend this functionality. Happy to get corrected if I am. If it is not there, can it be something like ? (Or something better, whatever works.)