435960 - wrong rendering Arabic decimal point numbers

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, defect)

Description

[Amir Sepahram]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14

When a decimal point number is in the Arabic text, FF renders it incorrectly. For instance, when you write 4.1 it displays it 1.4, while IE (surprisingly) does this right.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Write some text in Arabic in an HTML file.
2. Put a decimal point number in it.
3. See the result and compare it to IE.
Actual Results:  
2.5 turns into 5.2

Expected Results:  
2.5

Since, it's a obvious mistake and haven't been fixed for ages, I'm considering it Major bug!

Comment 1

[Ryan A. C.]

I can't necessarily confirm this, as I don't actually read Arabic, but it does appear to me that Firefox is showing the numbers backwards compared to IE on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008052606 Minefield/3.0pre

on Firefox the 2nd paragraph numbers are 5/4, 5/2 and 2007, while on IE they're 4/5, 2/5 and 2007.
It might help to post screen shots of the 2 so that we can tell what the proper layout should be.
If firefox is displaying this wrong then I'm rather surprised this bug has never been reported before, but I can't find any dupes.

Comment 2

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Wait, is this bug about numbers separated by a decimal point (as in the description) or by a slash (as in the URL)? With the slash character the issues are more complicated, because the bidi behaviour was changed in Unicode 4.01, so IE may be still using the old definitions.

I have never seen numbers with a decimal point reversed in Arabic in Firefox. Here's an example: يونِكود 4.01

A testcase showing the problem would be useful.

Comment 3

[Amir Sepahram]

Attachment: A screenshot

Here's a screen-shot of the page of the same URL I'd submitted.

The thing is a "slash" is used to show "decimal point" in Arabic. So, the problem originally relates to "slash", not "dot".
I hope the attached screen-shot clarify things a bit.

Comment 4

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

(In reply to comment #3)
> The thing is a "slash" is used to show "decimal point" in Arabic.

Thank you, I wasn't aware of that. So if you type 2.5 (two and a half) in Arabic, do you type "2" "/" "5", or "5" "/" "2"? I'm confused because in the page source of that URL the numbers appear the second way, i.e. the logical order is the same as the visual order in Firefox.

As I mentioned in comment 2, the Unicode standard changed the bidi category of the slash in Unicode 4.01, and Firefox is using the new definition while IE is using the old one. This is strange because I understood at the time that the change was supposed to make the standard bidi algorithm closer to Microsoft's implementation.

Comment 5

[Behnam Esfahbod [:zwnj]]

> The thing is a "slash" is used to show "decimal point" in Arabic. So, the
> problem originally relates to "slash", not "dot".
> I hope the attached screen-shot clarify things a bit.

This bug is INVALID.

1. U+002F SOLIDUS is not the decimal separator for Arabic script.  U+066B ARABIC DECIMAL SEPARATOR is the one.

2. U+066B doesn't have any render problem in IE and Firefox.

3. The order of characters in the URL is obviously incorrect. (which incorrect here means agains Unicode recomendations)

Dear Amir, please contact the site and let them know the problem.  In fact if they are using ASCII numbers, they should use U+002E FULL STOP (like in English) or U+002C COMMA (IIRC like in French) as decimal separate.

Just for your information, the thousands separator for Arabic script is U+066C ARABIC THOUSANDS SEPARATOR.

You can input those characters on Shift+2 and Shift+3 on Iranian Standard keyboard layout. [1] [2]

1: http://www.farsiweb.ir/wiki/Standard_Persian_keyboard
2: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/rfpit/persianword/kb.htm

Comment 6

[Behdad Esfahbod]

I agree with Behnam.

Comment 7

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

INVALID per comment 5 and 6

Comment 8

[Amir Sepahram]

Dear Behnam,

Thanks for you prompt reply. 

I'm not talking about "slash" as a thousand separator, but as a decimal point indicator, as in 2.5 (two and half) which is written in Persian language as 2/5. So, comma or full stop cannot be used.

Although, it might be a MS Word bug which is a main source of the texts being saved as web page contents. I'll do some research and let everyone here know.

Comment 9

[Behdad Esfahbod]

(In reply to comment #8)

> I'm not talking about "slash" as a thousand separator, but as a decimal point
> indicator, as in 2.5 (two and half) which is written in Persian language as
> 2/5. So, comma or full stop cannot be used.

Use U+066B ARABIC DECIMAL SEPARATOR as Behnam suggested, not SOLIDUS.

 
> Although, it might be a MS Word bug which is a main source of the texts being
> saved as web page contents. I'll do some research and let everyone here know.

The source is Microsoft's broken keyboard layout, yes.  We've been working on educating Persian users though, for 8 years now.

Comment 11

[hasan]

I think this is IE's problem. You can copy the number in IE and paste it in notepad. You will find it wrong like Firefox. Because the user has inserted a wrong number in its page source but IE has hidden the problem incorrectly.

Comment 12

[hasan]

Insert the following html code in front page and test the result in IE and
FireFox.

------------------------------------------------------------

<html dir="rtl">

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>New Page 1</title>
</head>

<body>

<p><span lang="fa">سلام</span></p>
<p><span lang="fa">کد </span>html<span lang="fa"> زیر را در </span>
FrontPage-2003 <span lang="fa">وارد کنید.</span></p>
<p><span lang="fa">متوجه خواهید شد که در قسمت طراحی
این نرم افزار عدد دوازده و 
بیست و سه صدم به درستی نمایش داده می شود. اما
پس از ذخیره وقتی فایل ذخیره شده را 
با </span>IE <span lang="fa">باز می کنید، </span>IE<span lang="fa">
آن را غلط 
نشان داده ولی </span>Firefox<span lang="fa"> مانند
</span>FrontPage<span lang="fa"> 
عدد را درست نمایش می دهد.</span></p>
<p><span lang="fa" dir="rtl">12/23</span></p>

</body>

</html>

Comment 13

[hasan]

Attachment: IE has problem in showing these cases

Comment 14

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Created an attachment (id=332043) [details]
> IE has problem in showing these cases

So, are you reporting an IE bug?