Extending Bidi Support on the Web

Work has been under way at the W3C to define extensions for handling of bidirectional text on the Web. These improvements draw on the experience of experts who use these languages themselves and have found gaps in the current specifications. Topics under discussion include ways of avoiding directional issues when inserting substrings into text from an external source (such as a database), how to guess which side of a form field to begin displaying text and how to retain information about the directionality of text input into forms, how to ensure that browser chrome respects directional information, how to allow for icons and graphics to be automatically flipped in different directional text, etc. The proposals are targeted initially at HTML5, but are also relevant for other markup. This talk will provide an overview of the proposals made, and progress on their adoption in specifications.