Robert,

If I understand your question correctly, this is more a matter of text 
rotation rather than one of directionality of a given writing system.

Browser support for the CSS3 2d transformation ([1]) function rotate() 
has been improving (cf. [2]).

Two caveats: at the time of writing, you still will need to use vendor 
prefixes for most browsers; and since CSS boxes get drawn _prior_ to the 
rotation transformation, you will also need to tweak and twiddle with 
explicit CSS width and height properties in certain contexts.

In TEI, we currently use values such as #rot90 on @rendition, which 
currently map to CSS:

-moz-transform:rotate(90deg);-webkit-transform:rotate(90deg);-o-transform:rotate(90deg);-ms-transform:rotate(90deg);transform:rotate(90deg);

(Once universal browser support is there, you could get rid of the 
vendor-prefix forms.)

Markus

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-2d-transforms/
[2] http://caniuse.com/#search=rotate

Robert Whalen wrote:
> Perhaps I'm missing something, but I see nothing there pertaining to 
> vertical text--i.e., blocks of text running either top-to-bottom and 
> right-to-left, or bottom-to-top and left-to-right (as in a paragraph 
> or stanza turned on its side but surrounded by conventional/horizontal 
> text).
>
> Has anyone worked with such texts, both TEI and rendering?
>
> On 1/13/12 9:33 AM, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>> the Internationalization Tag Set (http://www.w3.org/TR/its/) was designed for
>> just this purpose, of indicating directionality. Is that what you mean? of course it does not
>> help with rendering it, thats down to your formatting engine, but ITS lets you
>> specify what you need.
>>
>> Of course ITS works well with TEI. There is an example ODD showing
>> how to add it to P5
>> --
>> Stormageddon Rahtz      
>> Head of Information and Support Group
>> Oxford University Computing Services
>> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
>>
>> Sólo le pido a Dios
>> que el futuro no me sea indiferente
>>
>>     
>
> -- 
>
> Robert Whalen
>
> Director and Editor, The Digital Temple
>
> Professor, Department of English
>
> Northern Michigan University
>

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