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w3c / jlreq

Text Layout Requirements for Japanese
https://w3c.github.io/jlreq/
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3.3.1: List and discourage use of characters that are intended only for a specific writing direction #161

Open kidayasuo opened 4 years ago

kidayasuo commented 4 years ago

List and discourage use of characters that are intended only for a specific writing direction. Possible alternatives will also be described.

Such characters are indicated in the A. Character Classes table. https://w3c.github.io/jlreq/#character_classes

There are some other characters that we want to discourage the use, such as Box Drawing characters.

Motivations: • On digital devices text data can be layout in any directions and it is not possible to limit it to a specific one. e.g. copy and paste from a book. • There are disabilities that makes reading in a specific direction harder than others. From accessibility, ability to change the text direction is desirable.

from 2020-01-30 TF meeting

macnmm commented 4 years ago

While digital documents can be either vertical or horizontal, I would argue that in practice the choice of vertical or horizontal is extremely important to the designer, much as font or size or other presentation would be. To change it automatically would be to destroy the original intent (such that it exists). I hope this is noted so that it is not misunderstood as something that many users would need a switch willy nilly to operate when reflowing content in some locally customized context. Plain text copy is one case where that destruction of original design intent is clear, and I can see some effort devoted to making sure that that neutral format endeavors to exclude directionally specific characters.

kidayasuo commented 4 years ago

Probably we want to limit the domain when we make such comments. When you are working on a design naturally you would want maximum flexibility. When you are creating text, however, there will be certain guidelines that you want to know and consider such as choice of character encoding, careful use of gaiji, indentation should not a part of the data, consideration for accessibility, etc. Not assuming the direction of the text is one such.

Of course one can intently deviate from such guidelines but my hope is it is done with such knowledge.