For testing BIDI UI enablement, it turns out to be very useful to use
mechanisms that give non-Arabic/Hebrew users an accurate picture of how
a "reversed" UI would look. For this, it is useful to have Unicode
letters that are the visual reversals of ASCII letters. With a pixel
mirroring, the page would then come out looking (roughly) like English,
with UI elements in the right places, and everything readable.
My first attempt is in the attached
graphic, first before graphic mirroring, then after. Look at the white
box on the left bottom of the "After" image.
Before Pixel Mirroring:After Pixel Mirroring:
A bit crude so far (some letters definitely could use improvement!),
but actually readable. The challenge is to pick the best characters in
the fonts available on most people's browsers (although people can be
requested to download fonts like Code2000). Because we want the
characters to work right as far as linewrap, etc., if possible they
should have pretty much the same properties as the respective ASCII
letters.
The table of mappings that I used above is at: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pA-jnsSQQRcY3IFcweX3GOg
I would appreciate any feedback on better choices that I can
incorporate into that table. Some of the above above could definitely
stand improvement: especially the capitals K, P, L, and G, and
lowercase t, k, g, and h. I also need to add digits and common
punctuation.
Checking
If you want to try it out on some text:
I used for #3:
the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. |
Unicode & Int’l SW >