Re: [I18ndir] Writing direction

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Tuesday, May 17, 2022 23:15 +0200 Patrik Fältström
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 17 May 2022, at 16:06, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
>> free text strings
> 
> Ok, got it. That is a combination of three words that for me
> is an approximation of "rat hole", or "can of worms".

Perhaps "can of rats".  

The problem is that we've got WGs and others trying to design
protocols who have concluded they need such strings, need them
in contexts that don't lend themselves to markup, and need them
to be visible to the user.  In one way or another, they look to
us and say "hey, i18n folks, you told us that 'Just use UTF-8'
isn't good enough and we need to specify both language and
direction.  But there is barely any place to put language and no
place to put direction.  What do you suggest we do?"  Probably
we need to try to answer the question and, at least so far, a
directionality extension to the BCP47 code system is the least
horrible possible answer I've been able to come up with, the
need to climb in and have a close encounter with those rats
notwithstanding.

    john