[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Libreoffice] [REVIEW] text orientation, not text direction

[Christophe Strobbe]

Hi,

At 16:48 31-10-2011, Jan Holesovsky wrote:
>Hi Lior,
>
>Thank you for the patch!  It seems that it caused some misunderstanding,
>so maybe it might be good to CC: the UX guys for the suggestion of
>wording? - CC'd now.
>
>UX guys - please have a look at Lior's suggestion; for a screenshot of
>what he means, see his original mail in the ML archive:
>
>http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2011-October/019944.html

Just to make sure that everyone involved in the discussion knows how 
to use this feature:
1. Create a table; set "text direction" to "right-to-left (vertical)"
2. Enter some Chinese (or Japanese) text into the table. (In my case, 
the text appeared rotated.)
3. Change the font to one that was developed for Chinese (or 
Japanese, as the case may be) text.

You will now see the characters in vertical columns that should be 
read right-to-left.

So "text direction" is about horizontal vs vertical (i.e. vertical, 
then right-to-left), rather than the direction of the writing system 
(left-to-right vs right-to-left/bidirectional).

I have attached a sample document and a screenshot to this mail. The 
text below the table is identical to the text inside the table - in 
fact I copied it from the table. Also notice the change in quotation 
marks and the direction of "2012".

(See also this Wordpad screenshot from Wikipedia: 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wordpad_vertical_text_support.png>.)

Best regards,

Christophe




>mainly:
>
>http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/attachments/20111030/9a4f3746/attachment-0001.png
>http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/attachments/20111030/9a4f3746/attachment-0002.obj
>
>How does that sound?
>
>Thank you,
>Kendy
>
>On 2011-10-31 at 17:03 +0200, Lior Kaplan wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Christian Lohmaier <lohmaier
> > +libreoffice at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >         Hi Lior, *,
> >
> >         On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 9:26 PM, Lior Kaplan
> >         <kaplanlior at gmail.com> wrote:
> >         >
> >         > In my RTL bugs talk during the conference, I showed a weird
> >         option in the
> >         > tables options -> text flow tab which refers to RTL text as
> >         vertical
> >         > (guessing a feature for Japanese). See attached screen shot.
> >         >
> >         > I'm attaching to patches to fix this:
> >         > 1. A string change (trivial).
> >
> >
> >         But that change doesn't improve anything at all. I immediately
> >         understand what the difference between "left-to-right" and
> >         "right-to-left (vertical)" means, but what the heck is
> >         "horizontal"?
> >         that could also be right-to-left, and more importantly:
> >         Vertical could
> >         also be left-to-right written vertically.
> >
> > These options doesn't touch the text directionality (RTL/LTR) but only
> > decide whether it goes horizontally or vertically.
> >
> >
> >         So I don't see any benefit in changing those. (on the
> >         contrary, it
> >         would replace clear labels with "need to try them to figure
> >         out what
> >         they do" ones.
> >
> >         As for "Text direction" vs "Text orientation" - I don't really
> >         care,
> >         although I'd associate left-aligned vs right-aligned more with
> >         orientation, and the overall writing layout with direction,
> >         but then
> >         again I'm not a native speaker...
> >
> >
> > I've changed this text for two reason:
> > 1. To diffrenciate from the "Text direction" on the table tab (the
> > previous tab in the same window). There the options are RTL and LTR
> > which is right.
> > 2. To use the same terminology as other word processing software.
> >
> > I hope this better explains the reasons for the patch.
> >
> > Kaplan


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
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