Re: Scrolling text for BiDi languages

From: Martin J. Dürst (duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp)
Date: Fri Oct 09 2009 - 05:38:38 CDT

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    Do you mean you want to use this e.g. for running text on a billbord or
    like the infamous <markee> tag (see e.g.
    http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/_MARQUEE.html)? [From that experience,
    it should be clear that in most cases, moving text is a bad idea, but
    there are of course some exceptions).

    I think the only thing you can do is to define the scrolling direction
    based on the main language, and to try to reduce the amount of text that
    runs the other way (e.g. Latin in Arabic,...). What may also work is to
    turn the Latin letters 90 degrees, after reordering them. Readers will
    have to tilt their heads, but they will be able to see the letters in
    the right order, and

    B
    l
    u
    e
    t
    o
    o
    t
    h

    still looks better and reads easier than
    htooteulB

    It may also be worth to play with chopping up the text in small
    fragments and reorder the fragments (e.g. words or pieces of words),
    e.g. like
      تقنية tooth™‎ Blue اللاسلكية
    But this very much depends on the width of the display available, and
    may not work very well.

    Regards, Martin.

    On 2009/10/09 18:06, Zhang, Daniel wrote:
    > Hi All,
    >
    > I have one question of how to show scrolling (panning) text for BiDi languages e.g. Arabic.
    >
    > In general, the scrolling BiDi text from left to right would be perceived as if scrolling Latin text from right to left. Sometimes it is more complex since it’s mixed text with digits, Latin letters and so on, e.g. a string like: تقنية Bluetooth™‎ اللاسلكية (Bluetooth™ wireless technology). If this were scrolled from left to right, it would (for an Arabic speaker) appear like:
    >
    > ogy
    > nol
    > tech
    >
    > less
    > wire
    >
    > Blue
    > tooth™
    >
    > Do you have any good idea, please? Thanks!
    >
    > Regards,
    > | Best regards | Med vänliga hälsningar | 顺祝时祺 | 順祝商祺 | どうぞよろしくお願い致します。
    > | Daniel Yalin ZHANG
    >

    -- 
    #-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
    #-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp
    


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