Re: language hints in code stream vs. SGML markup

Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)
Fri, 20 Jan 95 16:15:28 EST

>It does shift on a word by word and phrase by phrase basis, in multilingual
docs, i.e. English, Hebrew, and Greek in one paragraph.

I am a regular reader of such docs, and if I have Arabic fonts
I'd be writing them, too. I would want to use phrase tags to
mark off the shifts. Thus, if I were writing an article on
the Madrasah al-Firdaus in Aleppo, in English with embedded
Arabic, I do something like

<p>The eastern facade of the Madrasah al-Firdaus bears one of
the earliest <i>tiraz</i> bands in the Ayyubid architecture of
Aleppo. Its inscription reads <phrase lang=arabic>xxxx xxxxx xxx
xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx</phrase>, and the three words
<phrase lang=arabic>xxxx xxx xxxxxxxx</phrase> were originally highlighted
in red paint.

That has advantages for manipulating the SGML that go beyond
the problem of rendering.

Regards,

-- 
 Terry Allen   (terry@ora.com)