Bidi controls need to reflect isolation changes in Unicode and HTML5

[r12a]

Raised on 2013-01-18
By Richard Ishida

3.3 Bidi Embedding Controls (LRE, RLE, LRO, RLO, PDF), U+202A..U+202E
https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/NOTE-unicode-xml-20130124/#Bidi

The table for replacement markup needs to be changed to reflect:

1. the new isolating characters being introduced to Unicode
2. the new markup being introduced to HTML5 to handle bidi, which is still in development
3. the preference for isolating markup over non-isolating, as we go forward

"For details on bidi markup, please see Section 8.2 of HTML [HMTL 4.0-8.2]."

This needs to be replaced with a reference to HTML5.

[PeterCon]

Progress on this? (It would be helpful for the i18n WG to have guidance on use of the Unicode bidi isolate controls in markup versus the bdi tag.) The following doc mentions the tag, but doesn't provide guidance to not use the Unicode characters directly:
http://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/articles/inline-bidi-markup/index.en#bdi

[zbraniecki]

doesn't provide guidance to not use the Unicode characters directly:

And I don't think it should. <bdi> is a good solution for HTML markup, but not for localizable content that doesn't go into markup such as attributes, document title etc.

[aphillips]

@r12a could you label this repo for tracking?

[r12a]

@aphillips it's already tracked, since this is one of our repos.

Note, btw, that the document that belongs with this issue list was deprecated a while ago due to it being too out of date, and no resources available to fix it.

The following doc mentions the tag, but doesn't provide guidance to not use the Unicode characters directly: http://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/articles/inline-bidi-markup/index.en#bdi

We do give that advice in several other places such as https://www.w3.org/International/techniques/authoring-html.en?open=direction&open=inline and https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-controls. We could also add a note in the location you refer to. @zbraniecki note that the advice in those locations does indeed mention that there are places where you don't have the choice to use markup, and points to https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-controls to help the author in those situations.

[zbraniecki]

note that the advice in those locations does indeed mention that there are places where you don't have the choice to use markup, and points to https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-controls to help the author in those situations.

I can confirm that the language used in all links you provided matches my experience of working with <bdi> and Unicode control characters.

The only potential extension I'd suggest is the language used to mention the places where the choice of using <bdi> is not there indicates that those are exceptions. On the modern Web any localization will fluidly and continuously cross between localization of a single HTML element, attributes, DOM calls like alert or confirm, <canvas> elements, web components and other APIs including ones where text from HTML is used outside of the HTML markup context (like <title> of the document which cannot use <bdi> because its used outside of HTML to display the title in browsers tab bar and operating system window title).
I think it deserves to be elevated from an exception to one of the use case scenarios, but, as I said, that's a nuance :)