<behnam> https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/57

Behnam: Najib has something for the discussion of justification

<behnam> Google Drive folder of images from Najib: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4AzjidUPzvZQUl1QnJaZDF5dFU

Najib: These images are from some old books from libraries in @@@.
... These are some examples of justification.
... You wish to not justify verses in lines in paragraph.
... It is not possible to do with CSS.
... Now it justifies the whole paragraph.

<najib> Do you think it is a desirable property to not justify a part of a paragraph

<najib> inline part

Mostafa: The whole idea seems strange to me. Because a main goal in justification is to keep the look of the lines similar.
... To avoid too much space or kashida in one place and less in other places.
... This suggestion is against that goal.

Najib: Generally, a quote from Quran is set in a different style that the rest of the text.
... And generally they don’t apply justification to that.

Behnam: What happens when a quote spans multiple lines, including lines that only include that Quran quote?

Najib: We should consult the books that do this for this question.
... It is very popular in books that talk about Quran. There are many examples of this.

Richard: In the example with the red extract, I’m not sure but it seems like there is some spacing applied, even though it is very small.
... And in other examples they have some justifications for the verses in the forms of elongation or alternative forms.

Mostafa: What makes it harder is that a different font is used for these quotes.
... So these changes may just be a side effect of that.
... It makes it harder to extract the intetion of the designer.
... But if that’s a deliberate choice by designers to limit justification in quotes, we have to mention it as something that is used in some contexts.

Behnam: About mentioning that we need to say something about it or not, we need more examples to find a pattern and make a decision about it.

Najib: Maybe this is for emphasis.
... I saw another example (not in the images) where terms were in a specific style and their definitions in another style.

Behnam: I agree that this is a kind of emphasis. But the question is are there any general that can define these common practices?

Najib: We can have this discussion when we have more example and information on this.

Behnam: +1

Richard: In my mind, the way to apply these limitations in Arabic would be like it is applied in InDesign: you select a range of text and apply different spacings and values for that range.
... Unlike in English where you apply the same setting regardless of text and font.
... In Arabic we have much more tools for use here. So they can be used with more control.

Behnam: I agree with wath Richard said. But I think we require more examples of this.

Richard: For browsers we will need to apply justification settings to bits of texts in paragraphs.
... I guess we will end of with having some properties for Arabic in CSS.

Najib: In CSS I’ve seen two properties: text-align and justify. “justify” is a new one.
... For “justify” we can select different justification methods.

Richard: The naming of these properties is confusing. The “justify” is mainly added for far east justification methods.
... We might want something to define spacing and other justification methods.

<najib> +1 to Richard for some properties for Arabic in CSS.

Mostafa: The way I see is that there are many more tools for justification for Arabic than in Latin.
... Obviously, the first step is for the browsers to recognize and use these methods for Arabic justification.
... And ideally the next step is to have CSS properties to control these justification methods.

<najib> +1

Najib: Some images are about poems. A lot of tatweel is used in their justification.
... Such justification in normal paragraphs is not desirable but it is possible in poems.

Behnam: In one of the images three lines of poems are shorter than the next two. Do you know why is that?

Najib: It is a music poem and the music in first three lines differs with the music of the next two lines.
... That’s a style of writing.
... In one of the images the last line looks unbalanced, because they rest of the lines have tatweel for justification and the last line does not.
... I guess the same justification should be applied to the last line of the paragraph to make it look like the rest of the paragraph.

Mostafa: Even if we do that we will still have difference situation and justification in the next paragraph. Also, usually justification is applied line by line, not the whole paragraphs.

<najib> Is it right to have a requirement that the last line should be "spaced" or "tatweeled" the same way as the rest of the paragraph?

Mostafa: We can progress on this if we find examples in real world.

Najib: Examples from the books are all good.
... The problem only happens in digital tools.

<behnam> Action Najib to collect more examples for Justification rules and patterns

<trackbot> Created ACTION-81 - Collect more examples for justification rules and patterns [on Najib Tounsi - due 2017-01-24].

<behnam> Action Behnam to collect more examples for Justification rules and patterns

<trackbot> Created ACTION-82 - Collect more examples for justification rules and patterns [on Behnam Esfahbod - due 2017-01-24].

Behnam: Richard discussed the idea of having the word “script” in the title.

Richard: I brought it up because some people were confused by our title and asked us to make it more clear.
... We have the same situation with the Chinese document.
... People didn’t realise that we cover Persian as well.

Behnam: Changing the title to “Requirements for Arabic Text Layout” does not solve the problem then.

<najib> https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/88#issuecomment-272485955

Behnam: Shervin had some comment on this issue. Maybe we should wait for him to hear his comment.

<najib> s/https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/88#issuecomment-272485955//

Richard: On a side note, instead of leaving a “+1” comment we should use Emoji reactions.

Mostafa: I don’t care about which wording we chose, so if the current title is confusing, I agree with adding the “script” word. I read Shervin’s comment saying that it is clear in the text, but there is no problem with being clear in the title too.
... But like Behnam said, we might want to hear Shervin’s idea as well.

Behnam: I left a comment for Shervin to hear his idea about why suggesting to use “Arabic Text” instead of “Arabic Script”.

<behnam> https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues

<behnam> https://www.w3.org/International/groups/arabic-layout/track/actions/open

<behnam> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarnegar_(word_processor)