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Denis Sheremet
Denis Sheremet

Reputation: 2583

Can i use css direction-rtl < and > swapping?

I've found out what css direction: rtl swaps < and > symbols in text. I've looked through w3c specification, but don't found any mentions of this. The question is about browser support and possible pitfalls. Which characters are replaced this way? What will happen if I'll use custom font with < and without > character?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 276

Answers (1)

Mr Lister
Mr Lister

Reputation: 46599

The question "Which characters are replaced this way?" is addressed in the Unicode Character Database under the heading Property Definitions:

BidiMirroring.txt

Informative mapping for substituting characters in an implementation of bidirectional mirroring. This maps a subset of characters with the Bidi_Mirrored property to other characters that normally are displayed with the corresponding mirrored glyph. When a character with the Bidi_Mirrored property has the default value for Bidi_Mirroring_Glyph, that means that no other character exists whose glyph is appropriate for character-based glyph mirroring. Implementations must then use other mechanisms to implement mirroring of those characters for the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. See Unicode Standard Annex #9, "Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm" [UAX9]. Do not confuse this property with the Bidi_Mirrored property itself.

The BidiMirroring.txt file can be found here: http://unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/BidiMirroring.txt

containing

0028; 0029 # LEFT PARENTHESIS
0029; 0028 # RIGHT PARENTHESIS
003C; 003E # LESS-THAN SIGN
003E; 003C # GREATER-THAN SIGN
005B; 005D # LEFT SQUARE BRACKET
005D; 005B # RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET
007B; 007D # LEFT CURLY BRACKET
007D; 007B # RIGHT CURLY BRACKET

and many more!

Then browser support: a quick and dirty and by no means authoritative test shows that it's supported in browsers as old as IE8, FF3.6, Chrome 20 and Opera 11.

No currently in a position to test fonts with a > but without a < glyph, sorry.

Upvotes: 2

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