In text styling, the word "orientation" typically refers to individual glyphs; not to progressions of glyphs along a line or lines along a page or area. It is therefore confusing to use the phrase "Text Orientation" for a table cell, and have values that seem to correspond to writing modes: Horizontal and Vertical. Moreover, we have "Vertical top to bottom" - what does that mean? What goes from top to bottom? The glyphs? Doesn't make much sense. The lines within the cell? But in Vertical orientation, that should be either LTR or RTL. So, is it the direction within the rotated line/paragraph? Again no, one can change the paragraph direction. In fact, it actually means "Vertical, Left to Right" and "Vertical, Right to Left". Indeed, it is the writing mode of the table cell. So let's name that setting "Writing Mode:" ; this will be consistent both with CSS, and with the correction suggested in bug 162200 for the Page style dialog.
Should follow what is decided on bug 162200.
It should not be "text orientation" but "writing mode". It is a property of the cell. It is written to file in child element <style:table-cell-properties> of a <style:style> element of family "table-cell". The UI term "vertical (bottom to top)" generates in file format the attribute loext:writing-mode="bt-lr". It has 'loext' prefix because style:writing-mode="sideways-lr" will only be available with ODF 1.4. The UI term "vertical (top to bottom)" generates in file format the attribute style:writing-mode="tb-lr". This is for tables in Writer.
Sorry typo: The UI term "vertical (top to bottom)" generates in file format the attribute style:writing-mode="tb-rl".
Created attachment 195557 [details] writing modes on cell The attached document is set to tb-lr (traditional Mongolien) as page style. Therefor the left part of the table, whose cells do not have any style set, stack their lines from left to right. The content of these cells explains what is set in the right part of the table. Because of the page style the table cells are ordered A1 B1 A2 B2 A3 B3 A4 B4 A5 B5 A6 B6 B1 and B2 are set to "Horizontal". That generates a "lr-tb" writing-mode for the cell. The RTL of cell B2 is done on paragraph level. RTL is not available in the UI of the table formatting. B3 is set to "Vertical (Top to Bottom)". That generates a "rl-tb" writing mode for the cell. Notice that CJK characters are upright and the latin 2024 is rotated. B4 is set to "Use superordinate object settings". That is for the attached document the "tb-lr" setting of the page style. Here too CJK characters are upright and 2024 rotated. B5 is set to "Vertical (Bottom to Top). That generates a loext:writing-mode="bt-lr". That is in fact "sideways-lr". Notice, that the CJK characters are rotated same as 2024. B6 is not changed and shows the inherited "tb-lr". A writing mode "sideways-rl" is neither implemented for page style nor for table-cells.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. Regina's proposal "writing mode" sounds good. Whether this _needs_ to be renamed is a question for people with more expertise.