Talk:Bidirectional text

vertical

What about mixing top/bottom and l/r or r/l on the same page? Somewhere, I think I remember reading something about this... does anyone know the details?

CJK are the only languages I know that can be written vertically. CJK are traditionally written in columns from right to left. This vertical writing is not a requirement, so they are often display horizontally from left to right.

When you purchase CJK fonts, most fonts come w/a vertical variation (name of the vertical variation would start with @ symbol). They are the same glyphs but rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. It is not meant to be read on screen, because you will have to tilt your head 90 degrees to read it. These rotated fonts are for printing. When you print, the text will come out vertically.

I know there are better implimentation of this in CSS for screen display, but I haven't seen any site using it except for demonstartion. --Voidvector 08:40, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Yokogaki and tategaki touches on the subject of vertical and horizontal writing in CJK (but mostly J). —Tokek 06:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What tools Wiki provide for bi-directional text ?

I am very interested to know what tools are there for making the edit pages bi-directional. That is to provide a facility in the form of a button, so the user can choose which direction he/she is going to write. Any one knows where or how this can be done? Mehrdad 03:29, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, bi-directional support is handled by the browser (client-side), not wiki server (server-side). If your browser supports bi-directional text, then the text would be displayed correctly, otherwise, no luck.--Voidvector 19:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Bidi" as printing term

This article mentions the term 'bidi' for bidirectional (of texts that include multiple scripts written in more than one direction). It is also (perhaps only historically now) a term for e.g. dot-matrix printers that can print more quickly by placing ink onto the page whichever way the print head is moving (i.e. not just printing left to right and then "inklessly" moving back to the left-hand side). Since "bidi" redirects here, should there be some sort of disambiguation page dealing with this sense? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.131.102.65 (talk) 21:38, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unicode logical store vs presentational rendering

The article says, "In Unicode encoding, all non-punctuation characters are stored in writing order." This is not true: text in the Indic ranges is stored in pronunciation order, with the rendering system responsible for rearranging glyphs as the orthography demands.

Section 9.1 of the Unicode Standard 4.0 says:

The orthographic syllable is built up of alphabetic pieces, the actual letters of the Devanagari script. These pieces consist of three distinct character types: consonant letters, independent vowels, and dependent vowel signs. In a text sequence, these characters are stored in logical (phonetic) order.
(page 220)

Additionally, a few Devanagari characters cause a change in the order of the displayed characters. This reordering is not commonly seen in non-Indic scripts and occurs independently of any bidirectional character reordering that might be required.
(page 220)

The greatest variation among different Indic scripts is found in the way that the dependent vowels are applied to base letterforms. Devanagari has a collection of nonspacing dependent vowel signs that may appear above or below a consonant letter, as well as spacing dependent vowel signs that may occur to the right or to the left of a consonant letter or consonant cluster. Other Indic scripts generally have one or more of these forms, but what is a nonspacing mark in one script may be a spacing mark in another. Also, some of the Indic scripts have single dependent vowels that are indicated by two or more glyph components—and those glyph components may surround a consonant letter both to the left and right or may occur both above and below it.
The Devanagari script has only one character denoting a left-side dependent vowel sign: U+093F DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN I. Other Indic scripts either have no such vowel signs (Telugu and Kannada) or include as many as three of these signs (Bengali, Tamil, and Malayalam).
(page 220)

Because Devanagari and other Indic scripts have some dependent vowels that must be depicted to the left side of their consonant letter, the software that renders the Indic scripts must be able to reorder elements in mapping from the logical (character) store to the presentational (glyph) rendering. For example, if C_n denotes the nominal form of consonant C, and V_vs denotes a left-side dependent vowel sign form of vowel V, then a reordering of glyphs with respect to encoded characters occurs as just shown.
(page 228)

Anyone want to edit the article to allow for the above without straying from the scope of the article? Christian Campbell (talk) 01:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

҉

The section “҉” is not about that Unicode code point. It's about a sort of parlour trick where invisible Unicode characters make text display backwards. It deserves perhaps one sentence in this article, if an actual reference can be found. —Michael Z. 2008-05-29 00:54 z

And should we delete the entire article about bi-directional text because no suitable references have yet been found? Your indiscriminate attitude towards this article (and the previous article ҉ ) is detrimental to Wikipedia as a whole. We should encourage the citation of proper references, not the deletion of anything and everything that dare encroach on your "territory" that you deem unimportant. StarburstCreator (talk) 11:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)StarburstCreator[reply]

Would please explain why this is important? That it "it slipped out into the World of Warcraft messageboards, after which it exploded, so to speak" doesn't make it notable. I have never heard of this, apart from your addition to Wikipedia. Since you are taking credit for popularizing this "meme",[1] you appear to be a one-issue editor tooting your own horn (see WP:SOAP).

We should delete trivia with no notability and unsupported by verifiable references in reliable sources. —Michael Z. 2008-05-29 15:15 z

You have never heard of this? Is that now the sole criteria for what does and does not belong in Wikipedia? The majority of article you have contributed to or created are subjects that I have never heard of, and after a quick scan, a large number of them do not cite their sources either. And yet, I am not arrogant enough to assume that because I have no interest in the subject, that it is not notable enough Wikipedia.

And as for being a "one-issue editor", every editor starts out as a one-issue editor. Your clique-ish, discriminatory view towards editors who do not contribute the same vast volumes that you do is detrimental to Wikipedia. As I have stated multiple times, the correct attitude is to improve on articles that need citation, not delete every article that you don't find engrossing. Otherwise, Wikipedia would consist solely of Cyrillic miscellanea. StarburstCreator (talk) 17:25, 29 May 2008 (UTC)StarburstCreator[reply]

Unicode for "TM" seems wrong

The Unicode U+8482 for symbol ^TM as mentioned seems wrong.

I convert it to decimal (3392), and use "&#3392 ;" in a html file, then it display an unknow symbol (ീ) in my browser.

AFAIK, both U+E150 and U+E143 are for ^TM symbol.

For example, H E150 == D 57680, and "&#57680 ;" display as: .--Lovelywcm (talk) 00:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

8482 is the correct decimal code for ^TM, hexa being 2122. E143 and E150 are in a 'private use' section, meaning that there is no guarantee that these would display this sign in all situation. Clpda (talk) 20:02, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Top-Heavy article

This article is quite good in terms of content. Thank you to all those involved in writing it. But it is a bit top-heavy. Most of the content is in the introductory paragraph, before the table of contents. The opposite should be true. Introductory sections are important, for example for mobile platforms such as cell phones and PDAs where the rest of the article might not be loaded until explicitly requested. But they should be a few paragraph long rather than an entire screen. May I recommend then to summarize the current content into a couple of paragraphs and move the rest under the Table of Content, possibly breaking it down in a couple of subsections? -- manu3d (talk) 12:08, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]