"The directionality of an attribute of an HTML" seems weird?

[fantasai]

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/dom.html#the-dir-attribute

The directionality of an attribute of an HTML element, which is used when the text of that attribute is to be included in the rendering in some manner, is determined as per the first appropriate set of steps from the following list:​

If the attribute is a directionality-capable attribute and the element's dir attribute is in the auto state [run dir=auto aglo on their content].

Otherwise the directionality of the attribute is the same as the element's directionality.

The following attributes are directionality-capable attributes:​

• abbr on th elements
• alt on area, img, and input elements
• content on meta elements, if the name attribute specifies a metadata name whose value is primarily...

The list of “directionality-capable attributes” seems to be a list of attributes that take human-readable content. Since we've gone through the trouble to define this list, shouldn't the application of the element's directionality be limited to this list? Like, saying that the type attribute's directionality is RTL in RTL documents seems weird and wrong...

[fantasai]

(Idk if there are any normative implications for this, it just seemed odd.)

[Kaiido]

The text seems to imply that the directionality is only ever used when rendering the attribute content. Is it not true? And I believe any attribute can be "rendered", e.g with CSS content: attr(type), so this definition indeed needs to handle them too.

[r12a]

which is used when the text of that attribute is to be included in the rendering in some manner

This should also cover 'rendering' outside the rendering of the HTML page itself. For example, a title attribute text may be displayed in a browser tab or bookmark. Directional information needs to also be applied to those cases. Is that covered by the use of 'rendered' in this para?

[annevk]

Yes it is. It also impacts text-to-speech and such.