[whatwg] finding a number...

[Křištof Želechovski]

Numerals are written RTL in Arabic script, little-endian.  
For example, if you want to write "twelve thousand three hundred and fourty-five", you start from 5 and follow up to 1.
It was easier than to start from 1____ and replace the blanks with subunits.
On the other hand, Latin script is LTR with numbers written RTL (unless Roman numerals are used, of course).
This feels kinda uncomfortable, hard to write and hard to read — but European accountants have had six centuries to get used to that.  As a result, both the ordering and the direction were reversed, resulting in LTR BE used today.
(Note: numerological Hebrew numerals are RTL BE; 
this system is mirrored in the Platonic Greek numbering scheme, 
which is LTR BE.)

Vulgar fraction characters are… er… vulgar?  I do not think the specification should endorse using them.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org [mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Ian Hickson
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 4:17 AM
To: whatwg List
Subject: Re: [whatwg] finding a number...

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> 
> Of course there are a handful of other types of numbers. One thing that 
> is helpful is that in hebrew and arabic, numbers are written LTR even 
> though the rest of the text isn't. I am not sure about other LTR 
> languages - apparently there are a couple of Indic ones. On the other 
> hand, since I am going to meet a handful of people this weekend who 
> specialise in publishing for the Indian government, in at least their 22 
> constitutionally official languages, I will try to remember to ask. One 
> thing that is unhelpful is that in some languages numbers are written 
> using ordinary letters. Although I suspect this use is very rare on the 
> web, as I believe it is pretty much archaic in the relevant languages.
> 
> This is, of course, going down the path of specifying internationalised 
> number picking - something that some people are ust dead against.

Did you learn anything relevant to this discussion from that weekend? (Or 
any other weekend. :-) )


> And how about "vulgar fraction characters" like ¼ (U+00BC VULGAR 
> FRACTION ONE QUARTER) and other numeric characters from the ０(U+FF10 
> FULLWIDTH DIGIT ZERO) to９(U+FF19 FULLWIDTH DIGIT NINE) or Ⅰ (U+2160 
> ROMAN NUMERAL ONE) to ↂ (U+2182 ROMAN NUMERAL TEN THOUSAND) ranges?

What about them?