Talk:Khitan large script

Direction
I think the direction shown in the infobox comes from Template:ISO 15924 direction. changed the direction of a few scripts, including Khitan large script, from top-to-bottom to left-to-right on 2016-01-27 with this edit summary "Jurc, Kitl, Kits and Tang are traditionally written ttb, but so are hani, nshu, etc.; only kits cannot be written acceptably in horizontal orientation and should be considered ttb like Mong and phag" I'd like to hear from him before the direction is changed back in the template. DRMcCreedy (talk) 23:08, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I noticed that the direction was shown as l->r in the infobox but the article (and picture) said top->bottom, so commented in edit summary. As I don't have any other information or expertise, I will stay out of this, now that it's been picked up by those who know. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 10:59, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Traditionally ttb like Chinese and Japanese, but when it is encoded in Unicode it will be a ltr script like Chinese and many other traditionally ttb scripts; and like other traditionally ttb scripts kitl is predominantly written ltr in modern contexts, especially in electronic text. I think the problem is that the meaning of is not clearly defined -- is it the traditional direction when carved on stone or written on birch bark? or is it the default direction when displayed on a computer screen? I think the latter makes most sense in the context of ISO 15924. BabelStone (talk) 00:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I've amended the text to add essentially what BabelStone just said. This to get the ball rolling; I don't expect my BabelStone-inspired wording to survive, but hopefully we'll get something sensible, and sourced. Maybe the relevant template should be modified to read "ttb and ltr" or other appropriate wording ("trad. ttb, mod. ltr"?), as required. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 14:53, 8 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Describing directionality By now, is deprecated and abandoned. Too much maintenance fuss, and we still cannot not get it right enough&mdash;as this thread shows ;-)
 * Instead, there are three options one can use to edit and show the dir information:
 * 1. Edit at Wikidata,, use.
 * 2. In Infobox writing system, use direction (will hide any Wikidata info i.e. local enwiki input has priority)
 * 3. In, use direction comment, which will add your text & refs, unedited, to whatever 1 or 2 produces.
 * See for example Old Uyghur alphabet, Khitan small script , and Tangut script.


 * "ttb or rtl/ltr?" The issue Babelstone describes: historically ttb, modern ltr/rtl (esp in print/scolar/multi-lang works). This turns up in ~all Chinese ideographs-derived scripts. So far, since I am working on this in recent weeks, it is hard to get this subtlety right in Wikidata/enwiki. And there is also the nice Mongolian script twist: rtl or ltr.
 * Unicode descriptions are in Chapter 18. My tech working overviews are ISO 15924/overview-4id and (bigger) ISO 15924/overview-4id/properties.
 * If we can find a good workable solution to 'pedia this, I'd like to learn.
 * HTH. -DePiep (talk) 20:53, 11 February 2021 (UTC)