* Tex Texin
|
| I am fleshing out a small page on bidi and I would like to list
| scripts and languages written in scripts that are bidi.

In that case you may find this page helpful:
<URL: http://www.ontopia.net/i18n/direction.jsp?id=rtl >

| For bidi scripts I have:
|
| Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Thaana

The page above lists rather more. The coverage of languages is spotty,
but it should be good on scripts.

| For bidi languages I have:
|
| Adighe, Algerian Tribal, Arabic, Avesta, Baluchi, Berber, Dargwa,
| Farsi/Persian, Hausa, Hebrew, Ingush, Jawi/Javanese Kashmiri,
| Kazakh, Kurdish (Sorani), Kök Turki, Ladino, Landha, Maldivian,
| Manchu, Middle Mongolian, Morrocan Arabic, old Malay, Pashto,
| Sindhi, Sogdian, South Arabic, Swahili, Syriac, Tajik, Thaana,
| Uighur, Urdu, Uzbek, Yiddish.

Several of these look dubious. There's a number of languages here that
may have been written in Arabic at some point, but which no longer
are, such as Kazakh and other languages from the same region. I'd have
a closer look at those.

| Is Thaana both a script and a language?

No. Thaana is a script, and the language is called Dhivehi, and is the
same as you've listed as Maldivian.

| Are some of the languages in fact scripts? (Jawi?)

Kök Turki is one of the names of the Orkhon script, but there may have
been a language with that name. The script was in any case not just
RTL, but also bottom-up.

Jawi seems like a typo for Kawi, the old Javanese script, which is LTR.

| As some languages are written in multiple scripts, I am considering
| identifying language-script pairs rather than just listing languages.
| Comments, as to whether that is better approach? (e.g. Yiddish-hebrew vs.
| Yiddish-latin)

I think the pairs approach is much superior, since it shows much more
clearly *why* a language is included on the list, and it's also likely
to help you deal with controversies where someone claims a language is
actually LTR. Another reason to do this is that bidi doesn't apply to
languages at all, only to scripts, and this helps highlight that.

--
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50 <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >