Re: fo:bidi-override - is it necessary?

On Fri, 6 Aug 1999 13:11:49 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:

>It's markup instead of what are essentially formatting codes.

But it's markup that is 100% equivalent to formatting codes.

>And you *could* generate the bidi-override characters in the
>transformation into FOs, but it's clearer to use markup rather than
>cryptic hexcodes or entities.

How is

 <p>This is some <fo:bidi-override direction="rtl">Arabic
 </fo:bidi-override> text.</p>

any less cryptic than

 <p>This is some &rtl-begin;Arabic&rtl-end; text.</p>

My real concern is that you now have two independent "absolute"
formatting methods, without any clearly-defined semantics regarding
how they might interact. What happens when LRO or RLO are used in the
text within a fo:bidi-override element? Which one "wins"? The RFC you
reference even mentions the problem explicitly:

"authors and authoring software writers should be aware that conflicts
can arise if the DIR attribute is used on inline elements (including
BDO) concurrently with the use of the corresponding ISO 10646
formatting characters."

It just seems to me that given the fact that Unicode already supplies
the elements required to handle all possible cases, the addition of
another layer in the form of a markup tag adds nothing but unnecessary
complexity. It makes the job of bidirectional formatting harder (and
consequently more error-prone), not easier.

-Steve


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