On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 8:06 AM, Shachar Shemesh <shac...@shemesh.biz> wrote: > I disagree completely. The embedding control characters are designed for, > well, embedding.
Correct. As plain text has no concept of a paragraph, using \n, \n\n, \r\n, \r\n\r\n, or any other convention for a paragraph is arbitrary. So if any arbitrary part of the text is to be RTL (no matter if the user calls it a paragraph or not) then it is to be marked as an embedded RTL section. > What the standard[1] suggests, but does not require, is the > use of the first strong directional character in the paragraph. The reasons > this does not work for email are: > > It is not required by the standard. It is suggested as a way to determine > paragraph directionality, but this suggestion is incomplete. For example, > the standard says nothing about what to do with a paragraph with no strong > directional character at all. > This suggestion is non-normative. The standard explicitly states that a > "higher level protocol" can be used to determine this property. > HTML has chosen the "higher level property" as the BiDi directionality path. > Unless certain discussions currently in effect become standard, HTML will > not guess the directionality of a paragraph ever, no matter how much you > want it to. There are some discussions about adding a "direction: auto" > property to CSS. > The only standard way to provide paragraph directionality in email is by > sending it as HTML > > A few takeaways. There is no standard I'm aware of that states you SHOULDN'T > use the first character in a paragraph to determine paragraph direction in > plain-text emails. I think that is a perfectly reasonable approach. However, > most of the world uses various MS based email readers. Those don't do it, > and they do not violate any standard by not doing it. As a result, if you > want your email to be legible by any recipient, HTML mail is the way to go > if you are writing in Hebrew. Complaining to your recipient (or sender) that > they are not doing it properly is both impolite and, which I feel many > people here will see as worse, technically incorrect. > > > I know many people on this list don't like this standard, but this extra > email did nothing to change it (not that I, personally, think that changing > it is the right thing to do). > I agree with you completely in regards to interoperating with defacto-standard software. >> Are you referring to me, in regard to the discussion that we had in >> which I think that the LTR- and RTL-Embedding characters should be >> available in the Hebrew keyboard layout? > > No. I am referring to all those who complain so violently when HTML mail is > sent to the list. > I see. I'm glad that I know how to configure my email client properly not to notice it, and that I have the disk space to spare for some markup. I wonder how loud those folks would scream if they noticed that Hebrew UTF-8 characters are _two_ bytes long! >> That doesn't mean that I >> dislike the idea of using HTML. Actually, I don't like HTML mail but >> not for that reason, rather a personal preference with no root in >> ideology nor technical reason. > > Okay, so maybe I was referring to you after all :-) > No, I'm not a complainer. I don't like _sending_ HTML mail, but I'll happily receive the mail in any format that standard email clients support (NOT Word!). -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
