Re: bidi scripts and languages

Peter_Constable@... scripsit:

> A script has a basic underlying directionality, which in
> some cases is RTL. Some of those scripts -- *but not necessarily all* --

Can you come up with any practical examples of RTL scripts which do not
require bidirectional implementations?

> I recall asking on the unicode list maybe
> two years ago how Arabic- and Hebrew-script writers wrote numbers: MSDF or
> LSDF. As I recall, the response was not uniform.

My recollection is that while some people said "You can do it either way",
nobody came out with a firm claim that he or she personally wrote numbers
LSDF in Arabic, and there was a general agreement that MSDF is the only
way in Persian. The numeric use of Hebrew letters, OTOH, is typically
least-first, but any order will do, since this is not positional notation.

> You don't transliterate text of one language into another language. Going
> from language to language is translation. Transliteration goes from script
> to script. What you mean to say is "transliterated into Latin script".

True enough, but you are omitting transcription, which I define as
"writing language A according to the writing conventions of language B
(insofar as possible)." Embedding the word "Tschaikowski" into German
text is neither translation nor transliteration, but transcription.

--
We call nothing profound jcowan@...
that is not wittily expressed. John Cowan
--Northrop Frye (improved) http://www.reutershealth.com