Direction
Computers were originally designed to use left-to-right (LTR) scripts. Examples of LTR scripts include Roman, Cyrillic, Ethiopic, and Indic scripts. There are also absolute right-to-left (RTL) scripts (some instances of Hebrew), mixed RTL (Arabic, Syriac, Thaana), top-to-bottom-RTL (Chinese and Japanese are examples of these), and top-to-bottom-LTR (Mongolian). These are the most common types in use today. There are, of course, other possibilities, such as boustrophedon. When typesetting historic texts, being able to handle this system may also be necessary, but this document will only address issues relating to the most common types.