Tag(s): tr-html-bidi

Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML & CSS was used to work through and communicate recommendations made to the HTML and CSS Working Groups for some of the most repetitive pain points prior to HTML5 and CSS3 for people working with bidirectional text in scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, etc.

It is being published now as a Working Group Note for the historical record in order to capture some of the thinking that lay behind the evolution of the specifications and to help people in the future working on bidi issues to understand the history of the decisions taken. Notes have been added to give a brief summary of what was actually implemented in the HTML or CSS specifications.

Read the Working Draft

This document arose out of the frustrations of people who have to work with bidirectional text on the Web in everyday practical situations. For example, it covers issues related to re-use of fragments of text in various new locations by web apps or scripts, or situations where users need to type in or send bidirectional form data. It proposes additions to the HTML5 specification for such situations, which are not covered by the current HTML specification. Many of the ideas in the document, however, are also relevant to markup formats in general, and there are some implications for CSS and XSL-FO (which we hope to address more directly in a subsequent document).

Please send comments on this document to public-i18n-bidi@w3.org. Join the list and view the archive). We hope to publish a new version of the document, incorporating feedback, in about a month (depending on feedback received). We will then ask the HTML WG to review that version.

Editor: Aharon Lanin, Google.