5 ms·

Kurdish Parentheses on OpenStreetMap, Three Ways

113 points by mapmeld 3y ago

jihadjihad 3y ago
It's OT, but it reminds me of something I saw on HN a while back about how Costa Rica handles addresses [0]. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999366
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- SeriousM 3y ago
  Oh wonderful HN community. Yet another hour spent learning something new! This time that my imagination of "200 chars are enough to store a street name" and "everyone has a zip code" is just plain wrong for a lot of places.
tgma 3y ago
This is nothing unique to maps. It has to do with Unicode bidi algorithm mixing RTL and LTR text in various contexts. Note that in RTL languages you have things like numbers that are rendered in LTR and mixing them introduces complexity. https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/ https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/
- mapmeld 3y ago
  I did a write-up because it was an example of broken text "in the wild" rather than in technical references. Also it takes me a minute to think of () as open/close parens instead of left/right parens.
  - tgma 3y ago
    Yeah. Nothing against your article. As someone whose native language is RTL I can tell you this is not an isolated case at all. If you're used to operating a computer in RTL languages like Arabic script you'd see this stuff every single day. Not exaggerating at all. ;) Unicode is such a complex beast this is just one aspect of it.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    You might be interested in a page I wrote about mixed RTL and LTR text and getting them to render properly: https://dotancohen.com/howto/rtl_right_to_left.html https://dotancohen.com/howto/rtl_right_to_left.html I suspect that your user entered the street name correctly at first, then played around with the wrong parenthesis in the wrong locations until he settled upon something that looked like it visually rendered as he expects, on his system in the input box.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jprd 3y ago
I don't know why, but when I first saw this headline I thought it was going to be something like a "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich". The actual topic is much more interesting :D
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
globular-toast 3y ago
Huh... I never considered that parentheses go the other way around in RTL languages... How do you think the user made the mistake in the first place? It seems like it was edited to "look right" when it was rendered wrong?
- sp332 3y ago
  (()) isn't a palindrome, but ())( is.
- chrismorgan 3y ago
  When you say “go the other way around”, it’s important to note that you still use U+0028 "(" LEFT PARENTHESIS as the opening delimiter and U+0029 ")" RIGHT PARENTHESIS as the closing one, despite their names; but when the bidirectional algorithm decides they should be rendered right-to-left, they get replaced with the opposite glyphs, according to the Unicode Bidi_Mirroring_Glyph property, and so LEFT PARENTHESIS is rendered as a right parenthesis. See https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/#Mirroring https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/#Mirroring for description of the process, and https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/BidiMirroring.txt https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/BidiMirroring.... for the full list of mirrorings, including mentioning cases where there is no appropriate mirrored character defined by Unicode (like √—in fact, I think they’re all mathematical notation), and so they suggest the renderer horizontally flip the glyph instead (which isn’t perfect, as things like italic slant will be inverted).
- taneliv 3y ago
  Try for yourself! It might be very instructive, even if you can't reproduce this exact same issue. Install an RTL locale and keyboard setting (Arabic is more funky with the cursive script where letters change form after you input the _next_ letter, Hebrew is not, so it might be easier to recognize some issues). Either way, you don't need to know the language, just bang on the keyboard to produce some text. Or copy from somewhere. Now try to: enter numbers in the text (they are LTR at least in those two RTL locales). Try to select a passage with both text and numbers. Try to copy and paste words from, say, Arabic Wikipedia in the middle of English text, and vice versa. Enter parenthesis, especially near newlines. I don't know about you, but my intuition about where text will get inserted is sometimes quite wrong. Don't be alarmed if things work differently in different applications. Or perhaps, be. I still haven't figured out how to input RTL and LTR text properly in Slack using Firefox (I don't know which party to blame, even: me, browser, or Slack).
Alifatisk 3y ago
This is so interesting, can this happen in other RTL languages too?
- Flimm 3y ago
  Yes.
gniv 3y ago
Meta: Some links or more details about the location would have been nice, so that I can check it for myself. Edit: Found it: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/195240072 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/195240072

113 points by mapmeld 3y ago

It's OT, but it reminds me of something I saw on HN a while back about how Costa Rica handles addresses [0]. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999366

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
SeriousM 3y ago
Oh wonderful HN community. Yet another hour spent learning something new! This time that my imagination of "200 chars are enough to store a street name" and "everyone has a zip code" is just plain wrong for a lot of places.

tgma 3y ago

This is nothing unique to maps. It has to do with Unicode bidi algorithm mixing RTL and LTR text in various contexts. Note that in RTL languages you have things like numbers that are rendered in LTR and mixing them introduces complexity. https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/ https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/

mapmeld 3y ago
I did a write-up because it was an example of broken text "in the wild" rather than in technical references. Also it takes me a minute to think of () as open/close parens instead of left/right parens.
- tgma 3y ago
  Yeah. Nothing against your article. As someone whose native language is RTL I can tell you this is not an isolated case at all. If you're used to operating a computer in RTL languages like Arabic script you'd see this stuff every single day. Not exaggerating at all. ;) Unicode is such a complex beast this is just one aspect of it.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  You might be interested in a page I wrote about mixed RTL and LTR text and getting them to render properly: https://dotancohen.com/howto/rtl_right_to_left.html https://dotancohen.com/howto/rtl_right_to_left.html I suspect that your user entered the street name correctly at first, then played around with the wrong parenthesis in the wrong locations until he settled upon something that looked like it visually rendered as he expects, on his system in the input box.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jprd 3y ago

I don't know why, but when I first saw this headline I thought it was going to be something like a "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich". The actual topic is much more interesting :D

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

globular-toast 3y ago

Huh... I never considered that parentheses go the other way around in RTL languages... How do you think the user made the mistake in the first place? It seems like it was edited to "look right" when it was rendered wrong?

sp332 3y ago
(()) isn't a palindrome, but ())( is.
chrismorgan 3y ago
When you say “go the other way around”, it’s important to note that you still use U+0028 "(" LEFT PARENTHESIS as the opening delimiter and U+0029 ")" RIGHT PARENTHESIS as the closing one, despite their names; but when the bidirectional algorithm decides they should be rendered right-to-left, they get replaced with the opposite glyphs, according to the Unicode Bidi_Mirroring_Glyph property, and so LEFT PARENTHESIS is rendered as a right parenthesis. See https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/#Mirroring https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/#Mirroring for description of the process, and https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/BidiMirroring.txt https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/BidiMirroring.... for the full list of mirrorings, including mentioning cases where there is no appropriate mirrored character defined by Unicode (like √—in fact, I think they’re all mathematical notation), and so they suggest the renderer horizontally flip the glyph instead (which isn’t perfect, as things like italic slant will be inverted).
taneliv 3y ago
Try for yourself! It might be very instructive, even if you can't reproduce this exact same issue. Install an RTL locale and keyboard setting (Arabic is more funky with the cursive script where letters change form after you input the _next_ letter, Hebrew is not, so it might be easier to recognize some issues). Either way, you don't need to know the language, just bang on the keyboard to produce some text. Or copy from somewhere. Now try to: enter numbers in the text (they are LTR at least in those two RTL locales). Try to select a passage with both text and numbers. Try to copy and paste words from, say, Arabic Wikipedia in the middle of English text, and vice versa. Enter parenthesis, especially near newlines. I don't know about you, but my intuition about where text will get inserted is sometimes quite wrong. Don't be alarmed if things work differently in different applications. Or perhaps, be. I still haven't figured out how to input RTL and LTR text properly in Slack using Firefox (I don't know which party to blame, even: me, browser, or Slack).

Alifatisk 3y ago

This is so interesting, can this happen in other RTL languages too?

Flimm 3y ago
Yes.

gniv 3y ago

Meta: Some links or more details about the location would have been nice, so that I can check it for myself. Edit: Found it: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/195240072 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/195240072