Template talk:Script directionality

Archived from Template talk:Infobox writing system

What? No direction?

I'm somewhat puzzled that apparently nobody else has thought to include this obvious piece of information that varies between writing systems - whether it's written left to right, right to left, top to bottom or in some other direction.

That said, I wonder how it should be notated. Should we just write "Right to left" or whatever, or use abbreviations like LRTB, RLTB, TBLR to denote both direction of characters and direction of lines? (I'm sure these have been used on WP somewhere, but next to nothing is showing up in searches at the moment.) Of course, the parameter needn't always be one of these by itself - we could have such things as "Traditionally TBRL, nowadays usually LRTB" for Chinese characters.

What do people think? Moreover, where can we put an explanation of BTRL, etc. if we're going to use these?

Or maybe we could just create the parameter now, and try later to standardise the notation of it. I'm not sure.... -- Smjg (talk) 22:27, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

The Unicode Standard actually has some compact, intuitive graphics for describing writing direction. I'll see if I can adapt those to the infobox format. Vanisaac (talk) 22:55, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Here they are!

Left-to-Right, down	Right-to-Left, down	Top-Down, left	Top-Down, right	Boustrophedon (starting left), down	Boustrophedon (starting right), down	Bottom-Up, left	Bottom-Up, right	Up-Right-Down (traditional Ogham)
LR-TB	RL-TB	TD-RL	TD-LR	LRL-TB	RLR-TB	BT-RL	BT-LR	BTRB

Now we just need to find a place to put them. Scaled down images: Vanisaac (talk)

I'm going to make up a text direction template that makes use of these images. We can then make a direction field in the writing systems infobox to call the template if we want. Please comment on the text direction template here, or at WikiProject Writing Systems. Vanisaac Vanisaac (talk) 06:30, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

A nice set of graphics, but I think we could do with a tidier naming scheme. For the ones where all lines are in the same direction, the abbreviations I've already mentioned would fit this bill and are intuitive - anybody who knows what LRTB means can deduce the names of the others. I guess the boustrophedon ones could be something like LRLTB, RLRTB. This leaves the up-right-down example, which I suppose could stay at URD for want of a better name.... — Smjg (talk) 21:51, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I'll look at implementing that set. The only problem is that "RTL" and "LTR" are really ingrained abbreviations, but I'll see if I can come up with a more compact scheme. Vanisaac (talk) 22:03, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I've put the new codes in the table above. The swirls are coded as CK-in, CK-out, WS-in, and WS-out for clockwise and withershins, inward and outward spirals. The vertical boustrophedon are analogous to the horizontal boustrophedon. Let's do a table with each of the images, and ask people what abbreviations and calls they'd like included. That's the easy way -

Please note, that line progression and block progression (e.g. the sequence of paragraphs) often coincide, but not always.

Glyph orientation can either be orthogonal to glyph progression – i.e. your “direction” – or be the opposite of line progression, and possibly there are more variants. This often differs among elements of the same system. Sometimes it makes sense to categorize short inscriptions, i.e. one vertical or horizontal line, as consisting of a number of rows or columns respectively, each containing just one glyph.

“CHICAGO” in one column (vertical line) or broken across seven rows (horizontal lines)?

The preferred writing direction in a writing system (or for a script) sometimes (synchronically or diachronically) depends on the surface or media, e.g. stone inscriptions versus street markings versus handwritten paper versus print paper versus screen …

Glyphs can be aligned at a (base) line that can be somewhere at the bottom (standing), the middle (beads) or the top (hanging) of the line box in horizontal script layouts (and left, center, right in vertical layout), and in some scripts glyphs have more than one guide (e.g. sinographic squares). This, probably, would be overkill to include in this template.

Nesting of other elements, e.g. modern international digits, often complicates matters – a lot. So does nesting of foreign snippets.

Also see CSS: Writing Modes.

Since you already use withershins, what do you think about rightwards / dextrograde, leftwards / sinistrograde, downwards, upwards, inwards, outwards?

For the common reader in common articles, however, the proposed visuals may indeed provide useful first hints. — Christoph Päper 15:10, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

@Christoph: Thanks for the suggestions on naming. On to some of the substantive issues you've raised, I think that the Chicago sign is actually one of those exceptions that proves the rule. It's like the old-time Chinese and Japanese writing, when they wrote a message on a beam, the characters ended up going right-to-left because they were treated as a line of one character length, where the writing system is top-to-bottom, right-to-left. It was only in modern times that Chinese/Japanese emulated western scripts in going left-right with their horizontal writing. In much the same way, a script that goes left-to-right (top-down) will orient as top-down when forced vertical. I'm not sure that's a detail that a template for general script direction would necessarilly want to broach. To be honest, if I were to write up modern Japanese writing, I would classify it as both TD-RL and LR-TD due to the dichotomy of the horizontal writing contradicting one of the directional parameters of its vertical presentation.

As for differences in direction based on medium, do you know of any examples where a language is conventionally written in a different direction based on the material, even though the media offer the same dimensional possibilities? I realize that historically, it was stone carved inscriptions that pushed Greek from generally boustrophedon to left-to-right, but I was thinking along the lines of a script where inscriptions, regardless of the dimensions of the surface, are primarily written, say, horizontally, while pen-and-paper is written vertically. VI_WS ^talk

Seeing as this will probably be used to "tag" scripts, the vagueries of bidi digits can be handled as simply another call to the template, or at a separate article for the number system.

Lastly, the terms rightwards / dextrograde, leftwards / sinistrograde, downwards, upwards, inwards, outwards all underdifferentiate, so any implementation would need to identify default values, and could do with a means of identifying alternates as well. Although I did already identify defaults for left-to-right, right to left, vertical, and boustrophedon. VI_WS ^talk 00:15, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Ogham – also an example for a “bead” script – is often said to go bottom-to-top, but that is only true for inscriptions on tombs and the like, where usually the text has just one line which may extend into the third dimension and therefore (wrongly, in my humble opinion) is said to be BTRB. It actually is LtoR–TtoB when written on paper. Latin, on the other hand, has almost always been carved the same way as it has been inked.

The Ogham example is simply a matter of historic vs. modern usage, so there's not really much to show on the template. Some scripts are going to need multiple calls to the template in order to distinguish current from historical or traditional script directions. Unless we want to have a "scope" parameter with values like "historic", "traditional", "modern", etc. but you'll still need to call the template multiple times. VI_WS ^talk

The Mongolian script – like most East-Asian ones – is also often a matter of debate, since modern print tends to be horizontal and classic print (and handwriting) is vertical. In Japanese newspapers, for instance, one finds both directionalities mixed on a regular basis. — Christoph Päper 08:14, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Which is really outside the purview of the current template unless we want to somehow indicate the scope or status of a given directionality.VI_WS ^talk 03:40, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Direction poll

This table lists the proposed codes for directions and the template name. The proposed directional codes are in the form of "character direction"-"line direction", L=left, R=right, T=top, B=bottom, Ck=clockwise, WS=withershins, H=variable horizontal, and V=variable vertical, with Unicode Bidi terms and default interpretations (like "vertical" for TB–RL) also supported. Right now, the template is in my private space, so the name can change when it is moved into the template space, so I'm looking for suggestions on the template name. Please sign your ideas (if you abbreviate, stick it at the bottom of the table) or add your name to any ideas you like. You can also comment on the proposed and requested codes in the fourth column. Vanisaac (talk)

Graphic	Proposed codes	Requested codes	Comments
Template Name	TextDir	Idea 1: Idea 2: Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	LR–TB, LTR, left-to-right	VI: Western VI:L–T Idea 3: L2R Idea 4: rightwards	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	LRL–TB	Idea 1: VI:LR–T Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	RL–TB, RTL, right-to-left	VI: Semitic VI:R–T Idea 3: R2L Idea 4: leftwards	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	RLR–TB, boustrophedon	Idea 1: VI:RL–T Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	LR–BT	Idea 1: VI:L–B Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	LRL–BT	Idea 1: VI:LR–B Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	RL–BT	Idea 1: VI:R–B Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	RLR–BT	Idea 1: VI:RL–B Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	TB–RL, vertical	VI: Chinese VI:T–R Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	TBT–RL	VI: Ithkuil VI:TB–R Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	TB–LR	Idea 1: Mongolian VI:T–L Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	TBT–LR	Idea 1: VI:TB–L Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	BT–RL	Idea 1: VI:B–R Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	BTB–RL	Idea 1: VI:BT–R Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	BT–LR	Idea 1: VI:B–L Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	BTB–LR	Idea 1: VI:BT–L Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	Ck-In	VI:Phaistos Idea 2: SG: CW-in	Comments: ClockWise
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	Ck-Out	Idea 1: Idea 2: SG: CW-out	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	WS-In	Idea 1: Idea 2: SG: AC-in SG: CC-in	Comments: AntiClockwise, CounterClockwise
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	WS-Out	Idea 1: Idea 2: SG: AC-out SG: CC-out	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	H-TB	VI:Hieroglyphic Idea 2: horizontal Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	H-BT	Idea 1: Idea 2: Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	V-RL	Idea 1: Idea 2: Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	V-LR	Idea 1: Idea 2: Idea 3:	Comments:
User:Vanisaac/template/TextDir	BTRB	VI: Ogham VI:BLT Idea 3:	Comments:

VI=Vanisaac ^talk

Direction Categories

I'm thinking the template should tag a page with a text direction category. I was thinking something along the lines of:

category:Left to Right writing systems (LR-xx)

category:Right to Left writing systems (RL-xx)

category:Vertical writing systems (TB-xx, and BT-xx)

category:Scripts written Bottom to Top (xx-BT and BT-xx)

category:Unlined writing systems (Ck-xx, WS-xx, and BTRB)

category:Boustrophedon writing systems (LRL-xx, RLR-xx, BTB-xx, and TBT-xx)

category:Variable direction writing systems (H-xx, and V-xx)

where "xx" indicates any value. Note that some writing systems (eg LR-BT) can be members of two categories, and a single script may have different modes for modern and historical or traditional writing directions.

What do we think? Should this be automatically done, or do the categories not make sense? VI_WS ^talk 06:45, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Having categories seems a good plan once we can agree on the names. The set you have seems OK, though some of the names will need a bit of tweaking. And we certainly could link the categories to the template, but should probably provide a parameter to suppress categorisation for special uses. — Smjg (talk) 22:20, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Of course, any implementation of automatic categories would need to have an associated suppression parameter (eg nocat=yes). I just kind of figured this idea was a dud because nobody commented on it. I'm going to put in a writing system articles category into the code and implement the nocat parameter. That way we can just alter the categories when we figure out what we want them to be. VanIsaac_WS 03:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

 Done I've put in the category code (mostly in /main), but left the code commented out. Right now, there is only a generic "X directionality writing system" category implemented. Once we decide on our category names, we can place them in and uncomment the code and have it work. I have also documented the nocat variable, but commented out the code on the doc page, and added the nocat=yes parameter to all template calls on the documentation page.

Why make the parameter "nocat" rather than "cat"? "cat=no" both is shorter and seems a little more intuitive than "nocat=yes". — Smjg (talk) 12:17, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I thought that I'd seen nocat as a pretty standard argument to send to templates when you didn't want the template to call categories. The fact that we already have two different kinds of unnamed parameters that need to be in the right order seemed to me another one was unwise. If your experience on nocat vs. cat is different, please feel free to change it. You'll need to change all the instances of nocat in template:TextDir to cat, and all instances of nocat and yes in template:TextDir/main to cat and no. Also, the documentation page will need to have nocat=yes changed to cat=no, and maybe a bit of the verbiage moved around a bit - but all the documentation dealing with categories is right at the top. VanIsaac_WS 15:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

TextDir template now live!

I have moved the TextDir template into the template namespace.

Names

Arriving late, but maybe I can add something.

• First, I'd propose to get rid of the abbreviated, concatenated name. That is only useful for insiders, and not easy to find. Also, spaces in template names are no problem at all. So I suggest: {{direction}} or {{directionality}}. Both words are used for this aspect of writing already in CSS and Unicode. Bidi is used too, but is too Unicode specific. (to be researched: are such codes also used for the flow of pictures & boxes on a browser page? At Mediwiki I found such an example. To be included/excluded here?)
  

I'd like to get a definite consensus on that before we move forward. I'd have absolutely no problem if we right now wanted to do a simple transclusion, allowing "directionality" in addition to "TextDir" (I think "direction" is too generic a term and could lead to bad feelings if there was a really appropriate template for that name). I claim this template in the name of TextDir! Plants flag. Do you have a flag? I'm sorry, no flag: no country.

Well, {{direction}} is still available, so a better use would be a future problem (then solvable). But now I get your love for thes meshed up letters in your signing name here. I bet is looks the same as in your passport of that state with no flag. How is literature there? Dante cramped on a stamp only in abbreviations? -DePiep (talk) 17:37, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

As for those last three sentences: WP:EN.

• Second. I see the words "writing system" are in the definition (which is not incorrect). We could make it more generic (and so useful) when allowing for a "script" to be labeled such a directionality, thereby skipping the language-aspects of a ws. In general, most known scripts have a directionality throughout the ws's they are used for, so that is covered. We would be in trouble if there is a ws that writes, say, Hebrew script LTR. Even then, the solution is: specify. This is also the solution for scholars, and the Chicago-example on this page: "English is written LTR, but this sign is written TD".
  

We have not come to any kind of consensus about category names. The one thing that my proposed categories have going for them is that they tie in with the Writing Systems WikiProject. Seeing as the intent is to incorporate this template into the Writing Systems infobox, I think the terminology may be important, and I think that losing "Writing Systems" from the name would be a loss. Especially because I seem to remember something about Uighur using an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet that is written bottom-to-top.

Good point. wss should be easy and correct in the categorisation. Somehow scripts in general then can have their own categories ("Cat:LTR scripts"), to be set by a named (obscure) parameter. Can be done.

I think I've figured it out. The regular categorization is "Category:RTL writing". The named parameter cat can take the argument cat=no for nocat, cat=text for "Category:RTL texts", which is a subcategory of "RTL writing", or cat=WS for "Category:RTL writing systems", again a subcat of "RTL writing". Whadya think? VanIsaac_WS 05:46, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

You know, I'd never really thought about it, but maybe we need to go back to the drawing board a bit. This template could be used to specify and categorize individual texts, not just a writing system as a whole. We'd need to add in a couple more specifications for signs/inscriptions/texts without lines, so we can have a simple unlined LTR text, a TB Chicago sign, or an old-style Chinese/Japanese beam inscription running RTL.

Agree, the aim of the template should cover this. For sure, any eastern Asian ws, old and new, must be covered. That would be great! (So the article/infobox says: "this text is written XXX-YY" - linking to that article). On top of this: maybe even we can create a template that produces text with a certain direction: {{Write text with direction|text=Chicago|direction=TB}} → (see picture...). As a detail: as a technician I'd prefer the L-R aspect in the first abbrev, and the T-B direction in a second - even when combined in one string "LTR-TB" - have to take a good look at the existing ones). Also, exotics like Boustrophedon or counterclockwise or "on a sphere" could be covered.

Overriding text direction is a whole other animal, and I do not want to get involved! Maybe cat=text could be overloaded to do the messages for individual texts. VanIsaac_WS

• Three. In CSS (browsers) and Unicode (may I say: in the whole western writing world) the terms "ltr" and "rtl" are synonym for the writings of, respectively, Latin and Arab or Hebrew scripts. Somehow I expect from a template as this, that these published standard (two) terms are covered with exactly the same meaning. In general, the line directions should be able to stand on their own (with a default completion?). So LTR should mean LTR-TB (not LTR-BT).

It already does. Check out the alternate codes in the documentation page. It may need to be a little clearer that the alt codes only match the directionality with the asterisk. Maybe we can color code it to make the alt-code correspondences clearer.

I think these points could make the template more general useful, and adhering to existing standards. -DePiep (talk) 16:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate any feedback. This conversation has been a bit lonely, so it's good to have fresh eyes taking a look. VanIsaac_WS 16:51, 18 August 2011 (UTC)