Closed Bug 151395 Opened 22 years ago Closed 6 years ago

Bidi: Use the "lang" attribute to determine whether to use Arabic number ordering in ambiguous context (UAX #9 section 4.3, HL2)

Categories

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, enhancement)

Product:
Core
Component:
Layout: Text and Fonts
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED INVALID

People

(Reporter: kyae-young.kim, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [oracle-nls])

Attachments

(2 files)

Expanded test case
(deleted), text/html
Details
modified testcase
(deleted), text/html
Details
Env. : Mozilla 1.0, Windows 2000, locale is Arabic[Egypt] Des. : Date Format for RTL direction is not correct. Reproducible step: 1) Load the test case 2) LTR direction is displayed correctly but RTL test case should be displayed "2002/06/08" Test case is <HTML DIR=RTL LANG=AR> <HEAD> <meta charset="UTF-8"> </HEAD> <BODY> <B>Date Format for RTL</B><BR> <INPUT TYPE="text" VALUE="28/06/2002"><BR> <BR> <B>Date Format for LTR</B><BR> <INPUT TYPE="text" DIR=LTR VALUE="28/06/2002"> </BODY> </HTML
I am really unsure about this case. First of all, I want to note that it's not 100% true that the date should be displayed as 2002/06/28 in RTL direction. This is only the case in Arabic, not in Hebrew, and this distinction is part of the rules for weak types in the Unicode Bidi Algorithm, starting at http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr9/#W1 Mozilla does indeed display the date as 2002/06/28 in an unambiguous Arabic context (try entering an Arabic character before the date in the input control), but should a text input control with no alphabetical characters of any kind, inside a document with LANG=AR, be considered as in an Arabic context by default? The HTML standard says (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/dirlang.html#h-8.2): "User agents must not use the lang attribute to determine text directionality" but I'm not sure that that covers this situation. The Unicode Bidi Algorithm says (http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr9/#Bidirectional_Conformance): "The following are permissible ways for systems to apply higher-level protocols to the ordering of bidirectional text ... Override the number handling to use information provided by a broader context. For example, information from other paragraphs in a document could be used to conclude that the document was fundamentally Arabic, and that EN should generally be converted to AN." That sounds to me as if our current behaviour complies to the body of the standard, and this bug report is an RFE that we implement that particular "permissible" behaviour, using the lang attribute as the "information from other paragraphs in the document". Kyae-Young, are you happy with that assessment? cc-ing Hixie and Roozbeh
Using xml:lang="" and <html:* lang=""> attributes to determine the language context of an element seems reaonable to me. Make sure you use the language context of the element in which you find the numbers, though, not the element on which the direction is set or the root element or anything arbitrary like that.
Simon: thanks for cc'ing me, btw
>Make sure you use the language >context of the element in which you find the numbers, though, not the element on >which the direction is set or the root element or anything arbitrary like that. Wait a minute -- the lang attribute inherits, right? So in the test case here doesn't that mean that *both* dates should appear as 2002/06/28?
Attached file Expanded test case (deleted) —
I don't really understand bidi rules, so I don't know really, sorry!
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Whiteboard: [oracle-nls]
Unicode 4.0.1 changed the classification of the SOLIDUS (slash) character from "European Separator" to "Common Separator". Mozilla is apparently now following the newer standard, resulting in all dates on the attached testcase to appear as 28/06/2002. However, everything said above is still relevant if you replace the slash with a hyphen (-), which is still a ES in the newer standard. I'll attach a modified testcase soon.
Attached file modified testcase (deleted) —
This is the same as the original testcase, except: 1. The slashes are replaced by hyphens, to achieve with Mozilla versions supporting Unicode >=4.0.1 the same behaviour the original testcase used to display with Mozilla versions implementating older versions of the standard. 2. The dates are given as regular text, in addition to being the contents of input controls, to demonstrate that the issue is not specific to input controls.
*** Bug 270914 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
=> All/All
OS: Windows 2000 → All
Hardware: PC → All
More descriptive summary, and change severity to RFE, per comment #1.
Severity: normal → enhancement
Summary: Bidi : Date Format for RTL direction is not correct. → Bidi: Use the "lang" attribute to determine whether to use Arabic number ordering in ambiguous context (UAX #9 section 4.3, HL2)
Component: Layout: BiDi Hebrew & Arabic → Layout: Text
QA Contact: zach → layout.fonts-and-text
Assignee: mozilla → nobody
I'm closing this as INVALID because the HTML Standard doesn't allow using the lang attribute in this way.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 6 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
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