Japanese Language and Computers - Direction of Text

Direction of Text

Japanese can be written in two directions. Yokogaki style writes left-to-right, top-to-bottom, as with English. Tategaki style writes first top-to-bottom, and then moves right-to-left.

At present, handling of downward text is incomplete. For example, HTML has no support for tategaki and Japanese users must use HTML tables to simulate it. However, CSS level 3 includes a property "writing-mode" which can render tategaki when given the value "tb-rl" (i.e. top to bottom, right to left). Word processors and DTP software have more complete support for it.

Read more about this topic:  Japanese Language And Computers

Famous quotes containing the words direction of, direction and/or text:

    She saw she had fallen into the hands of one of those doctors who have strayed too far from aperients in the direction of the soul.
    Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    It is not easy to construct by mere scientific synthesis a foolproof system which will lead our children in a desired direction and avoid an undesirable one. Obviously, good can come only from a continuing interplay between that which we, as students, are gradually learning and that which we believe in, as people.
    Erik H. Erikson (20th century)

    If ever I should condescend to prose,
    I’ll write poetical commandments, which
    Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those
    That went before; in these I shall enrich
    My text with many things that no one knows,
    And carry precept to the highest pitch:
    I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
    Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)