Re: [Ietf-languages] Fwd: I-D Action: draft-msporny-d-langtag-ext-00.txt

["Doug Ewell" <[e-mail]>]

Mark Davis wrote:

> There are Suppress-Script values for 134 languages, while there are
> 1,320 language-script values in CLDR; plus it has cases where the best
> script depends not only on both the language and the region
> (eg az-IQ).
>
> If someone wants to limit their usage to what's in Suppress-Script, it
> is up to them. But my advice (which is what I was providing) would be
> to use the more complete set in CLDR.

Fair enough. The draft had suggested a really rudimentary example, for which I suggested a rudimentary solution. But CLDR is certainly more thorough.

>> It still doesn't sound as though inserting 'ltr' or 'rtl' into the
>> language ta[g] would solve this problem...
>
> It wouldn't, and as I said (how did you miss this?)

I didn't.

> , I agree that having -d- is a bad idea.
>
> What I was explaining was that "what rendering process is likely to
> display Arabic left-to-right?" is not the right issue. You don't need
> to know the paragraph embedding level to display pure Arabic. If you
> are curious about the BIDI algorithm, you can consult the spec, or
> better yet, the W3C page on it.

OK, so the issue is that (in layman's terms) they need to declare the paragraph to be of a certain directionality, even if the text that begins the paragraph (or some other text that would set the tone for directionality) might not be of that directionality. Is that right? If so, I contend that a plain old language tag should still be a sufficient indicator of that:

<span lang="ar">rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz IS A LONG WORD.</span>
(example is HTML, substitute your favorite text format that uses language tags)

I know you agree with me. When I make an argument against this solution, it is not intended as a rebuttal to your argument against the solution.

> There are bigger fish to fry.

Noted, and thanks for the reminder.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org