From: Debbie Garside (debbie@ictmarketing.co.uk)
Date: Tue Mar 24 2009 - 08:10:15 CST
... the rise and fall of the British Empire... in driving terms ;-)
Nice bit of driving localization! (note the s not z)
Debbie
-----Original Message-----
From: Tex Texin [mailto:textexin@xencraft.com]
Sent: 24 March 2009 15:29
To: debbie@ictmarketing.co.uk
Cc: 'Vinod Kumar'; 'Unicode Mailing List'
Subject: RE: writing direction
Not even below the equator Debbie?
I prefer cursive scripts which is why I weave in and out of lanes
rather than just stay in a straight line.
http://www.i18nguy.com/driver-side.html
tex
Quoting Debbie Garside <debbie@ictmarketing.co.uk>:
> But it will never make sense to me to drive anti-clockwise around a
> roundabout ;-)
>
>
>
> Debbie
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
> Behalf Of Vinod Kumar
> Sent: 24 March 2009 07:25
> To: Unicode Mailing List
> Subject: writing direction
>
>
>
> Please have a look at
> HYPERLINK
>
"http://www.laughitout.com/2009/02/why-werent-you-successful-with-arabs.html
>
"http://www.laughitout.com/2009/02/why-werent-you-successful-with-arabs.html
> The writing direction appears to have a profound influence on
> many everyday happenings just as the cola ad shows. Yesterday (Feb
> 18, 2009) there was a news that the Taliban has enforced
> driving on the right side of the road in the Swat valley of
> Pakistan because they write from RtoL. Earlier, because of
> the British legacy, they
> used to drive along the left of the road just like us
> Indians. But it beats me to tell the connection between reading
> from right to left and driving on the right!
>
> A quip from my friend Vijayaraman: "Reading Direction" and
> "Driving direction" relationship is something one can ponder
> about! If there is such a thing, I wonder how Japanese would
> drive their cars - they certainly write top to bottom!
>
> Thinking deeper into it, there might be a connection between
> writing and driving directions. When you drive along, the trees
> and buildings on the left of the central vertical plane of vision
> move right to left and the trees and buildings on the right move
> LtoR. This is the case whether you drive along the left or the
> right.
>
> Now consider the incoming traffic. On one way roads, or roads with
> dividers the incoming traffic is absent or can be ignored.
> Otherwise, as on most Indian roads, the incoming traffic has to be
> watched carefully. When driving on the left of the road (India),
> the incoming traffic will move from LtoR. If we read from LtoR,
> the characters move in our visual space from RtoL. Hence, if the
> predominant writing direction is LtoR, you should be driving on
> the right of the road as in US to watch out for the incoming
> traffic. So LtoR writing (English, French) is compatible with
> driving on right hand side of the road! US wins over UK.
> Incidently, the Taliban has got it wrong here because they read
> from RtoL and should be driving on the left of the road as we do
> now in India and Pakistan .
>
> Now consider driving along, reading the sign boards on the side of
> the road you are on. This is normal as you wish to read the board
> "Uncle Tom's Cabin", get down in front and have a mug of beer.
> Obviously the left of the road driving is comaptible with LtoR
> writing. UK wins over US. The Taliban is now right in insisting
> that everybody should drive on the right and read the signboards
> strictly written RtoL in Pashto, Urdu or Arabic.
>
> The match is evenly poised. Are there other considerations for
> deciding which side of the road a country should drive given its
> predominant writing direction? Changing the writing direction
> looks impossible, but changing the driving side has a faint
> glimmer of chance.
>
> K Vinod Kumar
>
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