Top to bottom

The scripts used by the languages that have a #Wikipedia are written either in a right to left or in a left to right direction, the Arabic script for instance is "rtl" and the Latin script is "ltr". Supporting all these scripts is difficult enough. There has been a constant demand for improvements that make editing in languages like Arabic, Hebrew or Urdu easier.

Mongolian is one language that turns things on its head; it is written top down. Even though it is a living language, it is hard to find documents on the Internet. It is hard because at this time only Internet Explorer supports the Mongolian script in its production versions and applications like MediaWiki do not support it at all.

When Mongolian is to be completely supported by browsers, there are several issues;

• the shapes of the Mongolian script need to be supported by Harfbuzz and other shaping engines. 
• supporting versions of the shaping engines need to be included in the browser people use
• it still needs to be shown in the top down direction

Mongolian is not the only script that is written in a top down direction. SignWriting is another one. SignWriting is used by sign languages, there are several hundreds of these languages  and SignWriting is the only script that can be used realistically for day to day use.

There are several requests for Wikipedias that need SignWriting support. All these requests are waiting because of missing technical infrastructure or other issues

• SignWriting characters are not yet defined in Unicode
• there is a freely licensed font based on Unicode specifications but it is not stable by definition
• browsers do not support top down; for now top down needs support in the application

All this can hardly be considered "low hanging fruit" and as there is so much that needs doing. Supporting top down languages in general and Mongolian and SignWriting in specific is something to wish for. It is technology that needs champions that make it a reality.

Thanks,

       GerardM

A skin for a vertical script

The continued work that is done to enable #SignWriting is awesome. The SignWriting script is written top down and, this needs to be reflected in the user interface, the skin. I love the design..

I wonder what a Wikipedia logo would look like :)



Anyway, here is also the video that goes with the blog post. It is in ASL and, the actual blog post does not feature the new skin yet... :)
Thanks,
      GerardM

Orientation of text

When you have a text, you write either in a right to left direction, like in Arab or Hebrew, or you write in a left to right direction, like in English or Russian. In OmegaWiki, we are going to support the orientation for right to left once Multilingual MediaWiki is integrated in our software.

I have given SignWriting a lot of thought lately. This is a script that goes top to bottom. What I just realised is, that as as consequence a left to right word mixed into such an environment would also go top to bottom. It makes however as much sense to have a right to left word also go in the same direction.

The problem is that when you have both RTL and LTR in a top down environment, it will seem odd.

Thanks,
GerardM