Peter,
thanks for your comments and the link. I'll pursue it.
As for bidi being a lame name, all I can say is I didn't make it up.
I do see the confusion with boustrephadon. I'll comment on it in the faq.
tex
"Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
>
> Tex Texin wrote:
> >
> > I am collecting the info on bidi, for the following faq, which will be posted
> > here:
> > http://www.w3.org/International/questions.html
> >
> > I would be glad for your comments on this. Of course the list of scripts and
> > languages will be updated based on the mails I received.
> > Also, I'll add a link to your page Lars.
> > thanks
> > tex
> >
> > Which languages are right-to-left (RTL) or bidirectional (bidi)?
> >
> > Answer
> >
> > Languages generally do have a preferred script, scripts in turn have a
> > particular writing direction. The following scripts are bidirectional, and
> > therefore languages written in these scripts are also bidirectional:
>
> No they aren't!
>
> > Bidirectional Scripts
> > Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Thaana
> >
> > The following languages are generally written in bidirectional scripts:
>
> No they aren't!
>
> > Bidirectional Languages
> > 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.
> >
> > Note that this list, of necessity, is not complete. There are too many
> > languages in existence to identify them all here.
> >
> > Languages that are not bidirectional
> > Languages written in Latin, Slavic, Cyrillic, (Modern) Greek and Thai scripts
> > are left-to-right.
> >
> > Ideographic languages (e.g. Japanese, Korean, Chinese) are more flexible in
> > their writing direction. They are generally written left-to-right, or
> > vertically top-to-bottom (with the vertical lines proceeding from right to
> > left). However, they are occasionally written right to left. (In actual fact,
> > they are written vertically top-to-bottom in lengths of a single character,
> > and therefore appear to be written as right-to-left.) Chinese newspapers
> > sometimes combine all of these writing directions on a page. Fortunately for
> > web designers and authors, the decision of writing ideographic languages
> > left-to-right or top-to-bottom is up to the designer or author.
> >
> > A good resource for information about languages is the SIL Ethnologue.
>
> It doesn't include information about scripts.
>
> Have you tried www.rosettaproject.org, which includes many scanned
> excerpts from *The World's Writing Systems*; or www.omniglot.com ?
>
> > Background
> > "Which languages are right-to-left?" is a common question, although
> > incorrectly phrased. Knowing the directionality of languages is important to
> > web designers and authors, because the so called right-to-left languages are
> > more complicated (for beginners) to work with and the organization and
> > directionality of the page layout are affected. Therefore, knowing the writing
> > direction can be relevant to estimating the work involved to create web pages
> > in a new language.
> >
> > Why is the question incorrectly phrased? There are 2 inaccuracies within this
> > question. First, languages don't have a writing direction, the script used to
> > write them determines the direction. For example, Yiddish is generally written
> > in the Hebrew script, which is right-to-left. But it can also be written using
> > the Latin script which is left-to-right. Many languages can be written in more
> > than one script.
>
> Many?
>
> > The second inaccuracy concerns the use of the term "right-to-left". Although
> > the majority of the text will be written right-to-left, numbers are still
> > written left-to-right (LTR). In addition, right-to-left text will often
> > include borrowed or foreign words written in their native left-to-right
> > script, and so the text is mixed directionality. The proper term therefore is
> > "bidirectional", often shortened to "bidi". However, "right-to-left" is very
> > commonly used, and for reasons of symmetry is the natural antonym to
> > "left-to-right". "Bidirectional" is to be preferred.
>
> What a lame excuse. If a word in another script is dropped into the
> first script, the first script doesn't become "bidirectional"! If it
> did, why wouldn't the same apply to a passage in English with a Hebrew
> word dropped in, as is often found in discussions of biblical text?
>
> > There is more information on the different directionalities of scripts in:
> > http://www.unicode.org/faq/middleeast.html.
> >
> > There is more information on bidirectional languages, at:
> >
> > http://www-3.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/bidi/index.jsp
> > http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/dev/Mideast.mspx
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...
>
>
> www.egroups.com/group/qalam - world's writing systems.
> To unsubscribe: qalam-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:
Tex@...
Xen Master
http://www.i18nGuy.com
XenCraft
http://www.XenCraft.com
Making e-Business Work Around the World
-------------------------------------------------------------