Last modified: 2014-11-17 10:17:06 UTC
Vertical writing support has been implemented in M$ Internet Explorer. But no other web browsers has been implemented it as of spring 2007. The vertical writing support has been discussed, and will finally get supported in CSS 3, so I think this will not a IE-only feature, but will become a web standard. This feature is especially important in the Classical Chinese edition of Wikipedia, and many other East Asian languages such as Manchu and traditional Mongolian script. I think we can get support it now, without having to wait for Firefox, Safari, and other browsers. We can show the IE-user vertical rendering, and other browsers horizontal rendering, since even after 5 or 10 years, after CSS 3 will became completed, we still have old browsers and modern browsers to work around. Don't wait another 5 or 10 years. References: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts
Implementation will need to wait until there is support in more than one browser; let's see what the situation is in a few months' time.
Might be cute to see a demo, though.
Component: UI -> i18n. Reopened.
Reopened too optimistic. Still no wide standard implementation.
Some progress is being made on this: http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-writing-modes/ And webkit and firefox have prefix support for it, but i checked for mongolian on webkit, and it seems the glyphs are rotated, so it's still in very early stages it seems.
Are there any examples files or test cases for testing browser support for this?
Created attachment 8719 [details] Example HTML for mongol script and writing-mode
Created attachment 8720 [details] Example image of the Mongol text in the Example HTML
Created attachment 8721 [details] Super-simple vertical text example (Japanese text) Here's an HTML file with a few paragraphs of Japanese text and the body set to top-to-bottom & right-to-left (as is suitable for Japanese, Chinese, etc) At least the basic vertical layout seems to work in IE 8+ (using a non-standard variant of the writing-mode value) and Chrome 12 (didn't test earlier versions; using -webkit-writing-mode). Firefox doesn't currently seem to recognize it; there's a bugzilla entry and somebody seems to have been working on patches a couple years ago but I don't think it's being actively worked on. Actually maintaining the skins, editing etc in a vertical world could be.... interesting. :) Being able to make use of the vertical layout for formatting of individual chunks of text -- such as in a Wikisource -- might actually be easier and more likely to be handlable than doing the whole UI. IE info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/05/29/the-css-corner-writing-mode.aspx Firefox bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145503
(In reply to comment #7) > Created attachment 8719 [details] > Example HTML for mongol script and writing-mode Loading that up in Chrome 12 on Ubuntu 11.04 with language-support-fonts-mn extra fonts packages installed -- for me it rotates the glyphs correctly for vertical view, but neither horizontal nor vertical text seems to have shaping/ligatures applied so I'm pretty sure the result is illegible both ways. :P :)
Created attachment 8722 [details] Screenshot of Webkit NB (6533.21.1, r88432) Mac OS X 10.6.8
Created attachment 8723 [details] Screenshot of Mongolian test page in Chrome 12/Ubuntu 11.04 -webkit-writing-mode chunk is correctly rotated, but none of the variants are being properly shaped/ligatured here. (Bug could be in the font itself, the font libraries on my system, or WebKit.)
Created attachment 8724 [details] Japanese rendering inconsistency in Chrome Mac & Linux Even for the Japanese example there are rendering inconsistencies; in Chrome 12 on Mac OS X 10.6, ideographic punctuation shows correctly in vertical forms (eg parentheses open on the top/bottom instead of left/right, comma & period are aligned on the top-right instead of on the bottom-left) whereas in Chrome 12 on Ubuntu 11.04, these all remain in their horizontal-layout forms. On the other hand, katakana long vowel marks do correctly show vertically elsewhere in the text, indicating that something is recognizing verticalness variants... So this again could be a difference in the font or the libraries (the fonts that Ubuntu ships might just not be specifying all the variants they should, or the font rendering libraries might be failing to apply the checks correctly to those characters).
*** Bug 7450 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Switching from LATER to the second most relevant resolution for fear of information loss. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/65116 (In reply to comment #4) > Reopened too optimistic. Still no wide standard implementation. Can we consider browser support "upstream"?
Currently, about three quarters of Wikimedia visitors use browsers that support vertical text. I don't understand why it's necessary to wait for more widespread support when the alternative to using it is just to have nothing there. For Mongolian, the variants link to Mongolian script could be hidden with JS for non-supporting browsers. For languages that are exclusively written in vertical script, surely it would be better to have it work for some browsers than to not have it at all? As I understand it, the ResourceLoader already does for rtl languages something similar to what would be necessary for vertical scripts. However, instead of just flipping left and right, for vertical-lr languages right would be flipped with bottom, top with left, and height with width.
ResourceLoader uses CSSJanus, which accomplishes rtl by performing text substitution on CSS properties like `margin-left`, `text-align`, and the like. Vertical text is a bit more complex, because some elements need to be "spun" while others spun and flipped and still others left alone. JavaScript may not be necessary if we wrap all the vertical-specific rules in @supports, for the browsers that understand it. CSSJanus would need rudimentary knowledge of CSS syntax to be able to put duplicate rulesets in @supports blocks. Also, Chrome 29 doesn't support vertical form elements, which kind of breaks Vector's layout.
(In reply to comment #17) > ResourceLoader uses CSSJanus, which accomplishes rtl by performing text > substitution on CSS properties like `margin-left`, `text-align`, and the > like. > Vertical text is a bit more complex, because some elements need to be "spun" > while others spun and flipped and still others left alone. (Googles a bit...) Apparently there exists an extended version of CSSJanus called CSS::Yamaantaka, which works for vertical text. Dunno if it's usable.
(In reply to comment #17) > Also, Chrome 29 doesn't support vertical form elements, which kind of breaks > Vector's layout. The SignWriting wikis need those elements replaced by a Javascript solution anyways, for other reasons, so that's not an issue for them. Still a problem for other vertical languages.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Vertical_writing_support
