

[Bug 10809] i18n comment 3 : new attribute: submitdir

From: <bugzilla@jessica.w3.org>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 04:53:29 +0000
To: public-i18n-bidi@w3.org
Message-Id: <E1P1B97-0004hl-Vn@jessica.w3.org>

Addison Phillips <addison@lab126.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
                 CC|                            |addison@lab126.com

--- Comment #4 from Addison Phillips <addison@lab126.com> 2010-09-30 04:53:29 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> Is this bidi information only needed some of the time? Or does effectively all
> form submission need this information to correctly process submitted text?

Bidi information is only necessary for certain kinds of processing. It can
affect how content is displayed, especially in a context with a different base
directionality. But most processing is "direction agnostic". Lack of direction
information does not invalidate the data.

However, lack of the direction information does mean that the data may not be
represented (rendered) correctly later, as with the example of text inclusion
into an HTML page following submission.

> If it's always needed, it seems weird that an opt-in through a separate
> attribute is needed. It'd be great to find a solution which didn't require
> that.
> Like, should we always include information if the user has specifically
> modified the bidi direction? For example by adding a control character in the
> beginning of the value or some such? (As i understand it there are unicode
> characters that modify the text direction?)

If the user has modified the field's direction, that's usually a signal that
the information is particularly important. The original direction wasn't
working for the user.

Including the Unicode bidi controls into the data, though, is potentially
problematic. The bidi controls are "just characters" and can interfere with,
for example, identity matching with a data source. For example, if I say my
name is "ABCD", but the browser submits "<control>ABCD", the backing database
may not find my record. Stripping and adding controls becomes complicated,
since both manually inserted and automatic controls may be involved. Providing
an attribute is a better solution than munging the data in my opinion.

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Received on Thursday, 30 September 2010 04:53:31 UTC
