Peter, thanks. I have already agreed to the changes. I will post the revised
version here for further review.

tex

Peter_Constable@... wrote:

>
> Tex:
>
> The concern I have in this discussion is a lack of care in use of
> terminology. For instance, "bidi language" is absolutely meaningless.
> Languages do not have a directionality! What you probably want to say is
> "languages that are written with a RTL script".
>
> The term "bidi(rectional)" is not without problems, as noted by some
> responses in this thread. It has come to be equated by some in the
> software industry as synonymous with RTL, but that really isn't
> appropriate, IMO. A script has a basic underlying directionality, which in
> some cases is RTL. Some of those scripts -- *but not necessarily all* --
> require bidi implementations in software because numbers within text are
> encoded most significant digit first, which happens to make them LTR. The
> software implementation that can be said unequivocably to be bidi. As to
> whether we can say the script is "bidi" depends on a cultural bias: in
> thinking about number representations in text, if we consider the most
> significant digits to be first, then the numbers are written LTR, but if
> we consider the *least* significant digit to be first, then the numbers
> are RTL like the matrix text. 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.
>
> In talking about languages, if you really want to express things in terms
> of "bidi", then I think the best thing to say would be "languages that
> require bidirectional-text implementations".
>
> Another terminological issue:
>
> > I am under the impression that Yiddish is sometimes written
> transliterated to
> > english
>
> 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".
>
> - Peter
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Constable
>
> Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
> 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
> Tel: +1 972 708 7485
>
>
> www.egroups.com/group/qalam - world's writing systems.
> To unsubscribe: qalam-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
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