Caniuse: The bdi (bidi isolate) element, added in HTML5 to ease inserting RTL text into an LTR page or vice-v...

[Fyrd]

The bdi (bidi isolate) element, added in HTML5 to ease inserting RTL text into an LTR page or vice-versa. I do not know if it will be supported in IE10, and I am not sure how far back its current support in WebKit and Firefox goes.

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This issue was imported from Google Moderator

Moderator votes: +14
Issue added by Aharon Lanin on 2012-04-03
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[fabi1cazenave]

+1

[Schweinepriester]

+1

[cben]

+1

W3C's testing: http://www.w3.org/International/tests/repository/html5/the-dir-attribute/results-dir-auto#bdi

[cben]

A much wider question is whether there is support for bidi isolation at all.
Also reletad: dir="auto" [#1479] and unicode-bidi: isolate / isolate-override [#996].

Spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dom.html#the-dir-attribute
Comprehensive doc: http://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/

As a developer I'd want answers to 2 "big" questions:

• In which browsers dir=auto autodetecs base direction and _layout_ (by flipping CSS start<->end)?
• Which browsers support bidi isolation?

I'm aware of 4 ways that are supposed to trigger bidi isolation:

1. HTML5 redefined that any element with dir="rtl"/"ltr"/"auto" should be bidi-isolated.
2. <bdi> element. AFAICT, it's specced to be exactly equivalent to <span dir="auto">.
3. unicode-bidi: isolate / isolate-override CSS.
4. Unicode 6.3 RLI..PDI / LRI..PDI / FSI..PDI control characters.

It seems that (1) and (2) have roughly same support [basically everyone except IE] and I'd expect to see them on same page; any differences can be covered by footnotes.
[According to http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Html-bidi-isolation#Internet_Explorer_behaviour,
IE<=7 had one non-standard behavior and IE>=8 has a different non-standard behaviour, both somewhere between old embedding and isolation]

(3) probably deserves a separate page. While currently all but usual IE/Edge suspects have [prefixed only!] support, it might have landed in different versions than dir=... and bdi triggering isolation?
There is a relation though: given (3) it's easy to force support for (1) and (2).
[W3C's tests: http://www.w3.org/International/tests/repo/results/writing-modes-bidi]

(4) Is discouraged, doesn't interact well with markup and CSS. Quick testing suggests it only works on Firefox. I also suspect support will depend on OS and not just browser. IMHO it's fine to omit.

[ghost]

＋1

[rudijuri]

Now, only Edge/IE10 doesn't support this element: I would be conducive to reconsider the exclusion of bdi tag

[Fyrd]

Now available at https://caniuse.com/#feat=mdn-html_elements_bdi