Drafting “direction”

[mostafah]

I have a draft here in Google Drive. This is very short, because the role of this section is to introduce the direction of the Arabic script briefly and introduce references for further reading and I couldn’t think of more information to put here. If you have any suggestions for what can be added here, please leave a comment.

[r12a]

i think we should move this into the main document. (I added some text to the Google doc which you can accept or delete.)

[mostafah]

Sorry if you wanted to expand on this and waited too long. Sent the PR: #40.

[r12a]

To be done: a simple overview of the bidi algorithm.

[r12a]

Here's a link to the existing description:
https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/uba-basics

[mostafah]

I finished the text, but the images are not done yet. The text is available at the same Google Drive document.

I’ll send a PR after I’ve made the images. You can review the text in the meantime.

[r12a]

@mostafah looks good! I suggested a few trivial editorial edits in the doc.

[mostafah]

@r12a Thanks for the review and the speed.

[mostafah]

Moved the draft to a wiki page for further discussion.

[mostafah]

A few weeks ago we discussed the confusion over “logical order” and “visual order.” I updated that part of the draft with what I hope is a simpler explanation of the concept. The change is in the first image and its two preceding paragraphs.

Is this new version any better? More suggestions?

[ntounsi]

Figure 1
s/memroy/memory/

Paragraph before last:
May be mention also weak directional property for numerals.

About logical order, I wonder if it's worth to mention why it is "a pain" to work only in visual order. Problems such as writing the text backwards, line wrapping, explicitly right-align text in paragraphs etc.

[mostafah]

Thanks for the catch. Updated the image.

I understand the importance of weak directions, but I’m worried it might make this section even more complicated. I know it will be helpful for some curious readers, but I don’t know whether it will be worth it or not. What’s your opinion on this?

I have the same concern about mentioning why we don’t store text in the visual/display order. I thought about adding a sentence like that myself, but then skipped it assuming few people would have that question.

[ntounsi]

I share your worry to keep things simple and not go into the technical details, which can be found in external references.

[r12a]

Editorial suggestion: I think the text in figure 1 "The order of characters in memory" should be the caption, and the text "The order of the same characters when displayed" should also be a caption (which of course, means splitting Figure 1 into two figures). As a general rule, i think we should avoid text in graphics where possible, and it seems possible here.