Directionality of input element whose type attribute is in the Telephone state

[MyidShin]

In the section of the dir attribute, the paragraph says:

If the element is an input element whose type attribute is in the Telephone state, and the dir attribute is not in a defined state (i.e. it is not present or has an invalid value)
The directionality of the element is 'ltr'.

This doesn't match what Chrome, Safari, and Firefox currently do, and rather, browsers treat it as the following contents of the paragraphs as the other elements.

If the element has a parent element and the dir attribute is not in a defined state (i.e. it is not present or has an invalid value)
The directionality of the element is the same as the element's parent element's directionality.

I don't see a lot of value in making type=tel special. I think that we could have no special rule for directionality of input element having type=tel.
WDYT?

[annevk]

Seems reasonable to match implementations, though might be good to get input from @whatwg/i18n.

[amire80]

Well, I would see value in making it ltr by default in most languages. Of course, developers can set the correct direction manually, but I use Hebrew RTL websites all the time, and I see that many developers don't do it, and making a better default would be nice. (I'd also love to see the same for credit card numbers.)

However, it shouldn't always be ltr. Languages written in the N'Ko alphabet would have to be rtl, because they write numbers from right to left.

[aphillips]

@amire80 I agree with most of your comment. Telephone numbers are kind of special as input, since they are numbers that are usually separated by neutrals or spaces.

Thinking out loud... Would setting the base direction to auto work? Or we might need a special form of auto, since most digits are weakly directional. Making the default ltr would work most of the time, since we're talking base direction here and since scripts like N'Ko that write numbers RTL have digits that generally have a strong RTL direction. We'd mainly be dealing with edge effects, notably on the + symbol.

[dbaron]

It looks like this is being implemented in browsers, e.g., in WebKit/WebKit#15273 and https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/4851878 .

It's worth noting that the spec probably does require a style sheet change, in addition to the style sheet chunk proposed in #3699 (comment) , to reflect that inputs with type=tel should have direction: ltr when they have no dir attribute, probably either:

input[type="tel" i]:dir(ltr) {
  direction: ltr;
}

or

input[type="tel" i]:not([dir]) {
  direction: ltr;
}

Otherwise we end up with the HTML spec's concept of direction not being reflected into the direction property for a special case.

[annevk]

Thank you for surfacing this issue @dbaron! See also #3330 (comment) for more background as to why we want to preserve the Telephone special case after all.

I think Telephone is already covered using your first suggestion:

[dir]:dir(ltr), bdi:dir(ltr), input[type=tel i]:dir(ltr) { direction: ltr; }

or would some further change be warranted?

(I suspect #9689 is not impacted here as that would influence :dir which would end up doing the right thing.)

[annevk]

Closing this per my above comment. If there's anything I missed please do let me know.

[dbaron]

Indeed, I see what I was saying there was already in the style sheet.