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Office of the President of Mongolia: Top to bottom text on the web
- gen_greyface 4y agowith the writing-mode property https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/writing-mode https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/writing-mod...
- robin_reala 4y agoYep, specifically this uses writing-mode: vertical-lr and text-orientation: sideways-right.
- gen_greyface 4y agoany idea why there is a minor shift in line-height if we remove the text-orientation property.
- robin_reala 4y agoI’m not seeing that in Firefox at least. Bug in your browser of choice?
- gen_greyface 4y agoseems to be a bug in firefox developer version, works fine in chrome.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoWork remains to be done. The page title is rendered sideways. (Not that the space exists in the browser to render titles vertically...)
- ravivyas 4y agoAdguard is blocking the page https://reports.adguard.com/en/president.mn/report.html?aid=16593 https://reports.adguard.com/en/president.mn/report.html?aid=...
- dr_dshiv 4y agoWhat does it say?
- dotancohen 4y agoBlessed are the cheesemakers. It is not meant to be taken literally, it refers to all manufacturers of dairy products.
- rmbyrro 4y agoReally? Interesting. I wonder how many presidents in the world actually value who produces the food we eat.
- rob74 4y ago...and Google Translate misidentifies it as simplified Chinese :(
- posterboy 4y agoto be fair, google translate misidentifies a lot of input if instructions are unclear. And I think it's acceptable that they do not offer transcription for all the foreign scripts. Though helpful it would be, it's also very likely to make many mistakes.
- Symbiote 4y ago<html lang="en-US"> at the start of the page won't be helping.
- smn1234 4y agothese is also an option for english via hyperlink at bottom left of page, for https://president.mn/en/ https://president.mn/en/
- rchaud 4y agoWhen I loaded the page, the pagination numbers were in English, but the page text was in Mongolian script. About 2 seconds later, the page reloaded and showed everything in Mongolian.
- omneity 4y agoAs a native arabic reader, Mongolian gives me headaches. My brain keeps seeing it as an unreadable arabic script rotated 45 degrees to the left. (It also turns out it does have some arabic influence[0]) Still fascinating and super cool. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_script
- mrweasel 4y agoIt doesn't really help that they use Arabic numerals and rotate them 90 degrees.
- HopenHeyHi 4y agoNo kidding! At some point Genghis Khan invaded Afghanistan. Over the next century Pax Mongolica made it as far as Egypt. Conquered swathes of Persia, felt cute, sacked Baghdad. Just Mongol things. Splintered into a bunch of Khanates that started fighting each other.. Arguably they fell apart because they picked up so many scripts and cultural and religious influences the different types of Mongols could no longer communicate or tolerate one another. Then the bubonic plague came and they became insular again instead of expansionist.
- omneity 4y agoIndeed. The fall of Baghdad [0] during that century at the hand of Hulagu Khan[1], the grandson of Gengis Khan, is thought to be a critical turning point that ended the islamic golden age and drove the eastern islamic caliphate to a dark age Iraq and other descendant countries never fully recovered from. <graphic warning> According to some accounts, Hulagu cut open the belly of the Caliph Al-Musta'sim, pulled his guts and left them on top of the caliph's head to drip while he was slowly dying. Some other accounts relate that he was killed by horse trampling wrapper in a rug.</graphic warning> It's also fascinating that Mongols, with all their mighty army, would settle in a land upon invading it, marrying into the locals, adopting their religion and traditions. Some modern Russian, Turk and Persian populations have this "reverse influence" from past Mongol invasions and admixture with actual Mongol people. Tatars[2] are a notable example, a Russo-Turko-Mongol population descending from Golden Horde troops who settled around the Volga (as everything in ethnographics, this is contested). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulagu_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulagu_Khan [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Tatars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Tatars
- nologic01 4y agoCool. There is actually a W3C draft spec for Mongolian script![1] We tend to assume that left-to-right script is a law of nature but it is just one of many variations that have been invented and used across space and time. Right-to-left (Arab / Hebrew) [2] is well known but a most intriguing one used in antiquity by Greeks and others is Boustrophedon (alternating from left-to-right / right-to-left).[3] Boustrophedon mode is in one sense the optimal script form. At the one-time expense of having to learn to recognize letters and words both ways one can then (in principle) speed up reading as the eyeballs don't need to jump across the page to start a new line :-) [1] https://www.w3.org/International/mlreq/ https://www.w3.org/International/mlreq/ [2] https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-scripts https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-scripts [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
- pkd 4y agoThe runic script (futhark) could also be written l2r and r2l in alternating lines.
- dylan604 4y agoThis seems pretty efficient as there's no deadheading to get back to the other end of the line. When doing puzzles like word searches or scanning things laid out in grids like news article headlines, I do this l2r->r2l type of scanning. I've even caught myself using t2b->b2t scanning as well in these types of situations. It's just much more efficient
- kijin 4y agoOnly LF and no CR? Sounds Unixy enough for me.
- jl6 4y agoNow this is the kind of nano-optimization I can get behind!
- topper-123 4y agoKorean can be written left to right or top to bottom, which is very cool.
- zztop44 4y agoSurprised there’s not a Cyrillic version. As far as I know, most Mongolian people can’t fluently read that script. Edit: Apparently the government is pushing for increased use of the Mongolian alphabet in official documents.
- azubinski 4y agoDon't worry, they will learn as quickly as they quickly learned the Cyrillic alphabet, which appeared in Mongolia in 1940 only. And for this it will not be necessary to kill as many people in the "purges" as they were killed by the "Choibalsan's troikas".
- RobotToaster 4y agoI'm pretty sure the majority of the Mongolian people were illiterate before then, since education was mostly limited to monks.
- mistrial9 4y agodon't mention the Celtic language, you will break the immersion in your narrative
- gondaloof 4y ago[flagged]
- iso1631 4y agoImperial measurements are a gigantic waste of human work too. Metric won The US continues to use them though, it's part of their culture. We don't need to optimise everything, and the world would be a very sad place if we did.
- eloisius 4y agoEveryone loves to rip on the US as one of the only countries that “won’t use metric” but I wonder how many places officially adopt metric but traditional measures are still in common use. In Taiwan it’s very common to buy things in 斤 jin, aka catty. It’s 600 g in Taiwan and slightly less or more in other Sinophone countries. Housing is also measured in 坪 píng, which is the square area of a standard tatami matt. I think Japan uses this too because in TW it’s a legacy of Japanese colonialism.
- leto_ii 4y agoInteresting to note numerals are still Arabic, but written vertically. Does that mean that in school Mongolian kids learn to write digits sideways? Would be pretty cool :D edit: e.g. here: https://president.mn/mng/?p=7112 https://president.mn/mng/?p=7112
- iso1631 4y agoGoogle translate really struggles with this page. Only thing it manages to get out is "The" a few times!
- A_D_E_P_T 4y agolmao. Copy pasting this, from that page, into Google Translate: > ᠮᠣᠩ᠋ᠭᠣᠯ ᠤᠯᠤᠰ ᠤᠨ ᠶᠡᠷᠦᠩᠬᠡᠢᠢᠯᠡᠭᠴᠢ ᠤᠬᠤᠨ ᠠ ᠢᠢᠨ ᠬᠦᠷᠡᠯᠰᠦ᠋ᠬᠡ ᠡᠷᠳᠡᠨᠢᠪᠦᠷᠢᠨ ᠦ ᠤᠰᠤᠨ ᠴᠠᠬᠢᠯᠭᠠᠨ ᠰᠲ᠋ᠠᠨᠼ ᠪᠠᠷᠢᠭᠳᠠᠬᠤ ᠭᠠᠵᠠᠷ ᠲᠤ ᠠᠵᠢᠯᠯᠠᠬᠤ ᠦᠶ ᠡ ᠪᠡᠷ ᠡᠷᠴᠢᠮ ᠬᠦᠴᠦᠨ ᠦ ᠰᠠᠢᠢᠳ ᠪ᠂ ᠴᠣᠢᠢᠵᠢᠯᠰᠦ᠋ᠷᠦᠩ ᠡᠷᠴᠢᠮ ᠬᠦᠴᠦᠨ ᠦ ᠬᠠᠩ᠋ᠭᠠᠮᠵᠢ ᠢᠢᠨ ᠥᠨᠥ ᠢᠢᠨ ᠪᠠᠢᠢᠳᠠᠯ᠂ ᠴᠢᠨᠠᠭᠰᠢᠳᠠ ᠢᠢᠨ ᠲᠥᠯᠥᠪ ᠦᠨ ᠲᠠᠯ ᠠ ᠪᠠᠷ ᠲᠣᠪᠴᠢ ᠲᠠᠨᠢᠯᠴᠠᠭᠤᠯᠪᠠ᠃ > ᠮᠣᠩ᠋ᠭᠣᠯ ᠤᠯᠤᠰ ᠬᠡᠷᠡᠭᠴᠡᠭᠡᠲᠦ ᠡᠷᠴᠢᠮ ᠬᠦᠴᠦᠨ ᠦ ᠪᠡᠨ 80 ᠬᠤᠪᠢ ᠢᠢ ᠳᠣᠲᠣᠭᠠᠳᠤ ᠳᠤ ᠪᠠᠨ ᠦᠢᠯᠡᠳᠪᠦᠷᠢᠯᠡᠵᠦ᠂ Results: > - The - - ᠯ ᠠᠪᠠᠷ ᠲᠣᠪᠴᠢ ᠲᠠᠨᠢᠯᠴᠠᠭᠤᠯᠪᠠ᠃ > 80 ᠲᠣᠭᠠᠳᠤᠳᠤᠪᠠᠨ ᠦᠢᠯᠡᠳᠪᠦᠷᠢᠯᠡᠵᠦ᠂ Copy-pasting it into GPT-4 and asking for a translation: > "Mongolia's heroic history of the ancient period, from the time when heroes ruled the land, has left many great legacies. Among them, the unparalleled courage and power of the heroes of that time have been passed down through generations. Today, we continue to celebrate their extraordinary achievements and admire their incredible strength, while also learning from their wisdom and following their footsteps. > "Mongolia's heroic history spans over 80 years, during which many heroes have emerged and made their mark on the nation." Unbelievable. Google's slipping hard on translation.
- qtzfz 4y agoHow do you know that's an actual translation and not a bunch of bullshit?
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- sanxiyn 4y agowriting-mode support is pretty good these days. Here is another website in the wild using it for vertical text, mixed with horizontal text: http://ko.scp-wiki.net/gumiho http://ko.scp-wiki.net/gumiho
- ahmedfromtunis 4y agoI love how this makes the usage of screen real-estate very efficient. You can some entire articles without having to scroll the page. I also love how landscape images fit neatly in this configuration. It is very tempting to try to make a website that uses this configuration for english text. Also, even though it is the very first time I see this script, I can tell that the website is very well done (well, it's the website of the president of the country, but still).
- petesergeant 4y agoDual-English Arabic ads in UAE always make me do a double-take because of date order: Prime Day 24-23 يوم برايم
- toomanyrichies 4y agoThe link was timing out for me (HN hug of death?), so here's an archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230421094510/https://president.mn/mng/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230421094510/https://president...
- tin7in 4y agoSome time ago I lived with a Mongolian student for a while and I was really surprised to find out that Cyrillic is the default alphabet in the country. My language is written in Cyrillic and while most Cyrillic languages come from the same Slavic language family, Mongolian has very little similarities with the rest.
- Muromec 4y agoKazakh, Kyrgyz and many other languages are written with Cyrillic due to Soviet and Russian colonization efforts.
- paganel 4y agoThe same used to be true of the Romanian Principalities until the middle of the 19th century, when we switched to Latin alphabet in order to underline our Romance-language roots and to culturally distance ourselves from the expanding Tsarist Empire. Of course, the Soviet Republic of Moldova used the Cyrillic writing for Romanian throughout most of its existence, the people over there switching to Latin alphabet in the dying days of the Soviet Union was a prelude to their independence (I have two books in Romanian and using Latin alphabet published in the Soviet Republic of Moldova towards the end of the ‘80s - 1990, priced in rubles and all, really cool).
- chrismorgan 4y agoUnfortunately, touchpad scrolling on this specific website is basically unusable for what I believe is a very large fraction of laptop users because: (a) it does scrolljacking, which cannot be done well on the web (it doesn’t expose the right primitives) so sites should never do it¹ but find some other way; (b) its scrolljacking implementation is considerably worse than is possible; and (c) it intercepts all scrolling, rather than leaving horizontal scrolling alone and only redirecting vertical scrolling. Fortunately, I browse the web with JavaScript disabled by default, so I’m fine other than when I’m checking this out! (I noted this a couple of years back in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27758336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27758336, and I don’t think the site’s implementation has changed at all since then; Firefox exhibits the same symptoms, Chromium has changed to behave somewhat more like Firefox now.) —⁂— ¹ Sites, as distinct from apps; there are a few sorts of apps that can’t avoid it and must do the best they can, e.g. maps; incidentally, Google Maps has the only consistently-decent scrolljacking implementation for web-based maps that I’ve ever found.
- twawaaay 4y agoOne thing is sure, I would not want to be a UI dev in Mongolia...
- roveo 4y agoOh, I recently moved to Israel, and at first was shocked with how much worse design in general is. Like, typography, ads and of course UI. There are maybe 3-4 common fonts used everywhere, and I think it's a common problem for "rare" scripts. It seems you need some "critical mass" of visual content to come up with good design practices and figure out what looks good in your cultural landscape.
- MiddleEndian 4y agoMy first thought was about how browser tabs would be displayed.
- supernova87a 4y agoDoes it cause for anyone else what it does for me -- the whole screen "vibrating" when you reach the limits of the horizontal scroll, or somewhat even while you're scrolling?
- DHPersonal 4y agoIt does that for me on a laptop, but only if I'm scrolling with a trackpad instead of a mouse.
- rossmohax 4y agoHow does Mongolian IDE look like?
- local_crmdgeon 4y agoThis is so cool - love to see non-Latin script being treated as a first class citizen.
- smn1234 4y agowould this need some special treatment for SEO?
- robin_reala 4y agoWhy would it?
- wahnfrieden 4y agoYou can find plenty more examples on the Japanese web (top to bottom but also RTL)
- m3kw9 4y agoI have to lock rotation and turn it landscape to read this not only that, you have to scroll all the way to the top first to start reading. /sarcasm
- madaerodog 4y agoIt's optimized to be read on the horseback, you lean on the right or left to see beside the horses head and you can read the articles!
- githubholobeat 4y agoHere is the writing process in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m0ak3c2XK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m0ak3c2XK4
- yosito 4y agoIt doesn't fully work on my phone, which really makes me wonder how easy it would be to use digital devices as a Mongolian, who only speaks Mongolian, and no other language.
- anderber 4y agoIt's really interesting that the numbers are sideways, I wonder if they actually write them that way or if it's just a quirk of the web.
- rogerallen 4y agoI wish it was easy to render western text to multiple columns that are fit to the screen. Reading like a multicolumn paper newspaper and scrolling horizontally. I think this shows that it would be pleasant to read text on the web this way.
- BirAdam 4y agoOmg, I love the way this was handled. Impressive and well thought out.
- cheapliquor 4y agoYo this looks cool as hell
- Hithredin 4y agoThe interesting thing is that Cyrillic is the official script in Mongolia and original mongolian script survive in China.
- cbluth 4y agoЯсан гоё юм бэ? Монгол босоо бичгийг internet дээрэнд харч дуртай шүү. Хэдэн жилийн турш тэр бичгийг уншиж сурсан, харин одоо бараглаж бүр мартчихлаа I love seeing this stuff on the internet, i wish i could read it as well as i used to.
- Apofis 4y agoIf aliens had an Earth Embassy, this is what it's website would look like. I mean, it looks great, but it's just so different.