Re: Display of Mongolian in Arabic or Hebrew documents

On 21/11/2007, James Kass <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Here's a web page that has no problem displaying classic Mongolian
> script as right-to-left (even when embedded into Latin text):

Well, of course there is no problem when the Mongolian text is
embedded as images and not as text.

> http://mehmeteti.150m.com/ilkhanids/hpags-pa.htm

(Incidentally, I know this page and its author, and the so-called
Phags-pa inscriptions on the coins shown here are definitely not
written in the Phags-pa script -- there is an unfortunate tendency for
oriental numismatists to label any unidentified script as Phags-pa.)

> The web page author introduces the page with a note that the Mongolian
> script is being displayed RTL so as to be in harmony with the Arabic
> script display.

Which is weird given that I can't see any Arabic on this page. But on
the other hand it does make sense to display the Mongolian text RTL so
that it corresponds to the directionality of the inscriptions on the
coins (of course the coins could be rotated 180 degrees and LTR
Mongolian used instead).

Of course, in these cases Mongolian is best fit substitute forthe as
yet unencoded  Old Uyghur script, which was written both RTL and TTB.

Andrew