khmr km book vertical-text

[xfq]

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tag: vertical-text Khmer text run vertically on book spines. The text is read from top to bottom.
source: Photo by Li Shuxin

[r12a]

I think the direction is actually top to bottom.

[patchew]

This is actually horizontal, like English titling (top downward, left to right; as opposed to French titling, which is bottom upward). There's no turning of characters (or character clusters), like one could find in English:

V
e
r
t
i
c
a
l

The middle book has ហម ឆាយលី rotated 90º clockwise.

[xfq]

I think the direction is actually top to bottom.

Sorry, I made a mistake. I have updated the description above.

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This is actually horizontal, like English titling (top downward, left to right; as opposed to French titling, which is bottom upward). There's no turning of characters (or character clusters), like one could find in English:

This depends on how you understand it. Vertical writing mode means that the direction in which characters progress is from top to bottom (or from bottom to top), but the orientation of each character (CSS text-orientation) may be upright or sideways.

The middle book has ហម ឆាយលី rotated 90º clockwise.

Indeed.

[r12a]

I thought i'd already left a comment similar to that of @patchew but i don't see it here. I agree with him that this is actually horizontal text that is rotated clockwise as a block to make a book sleeve. You would use writing-mode:sideways-xx to achieve this, rather than writing-mode:vertical-xx, which is what's used when letters generally sit upright and embedded non-CJKM text is embedded alongside them.

What you're seeing here is no different from what we do in English, or here French books. There are no special techniques involved in producing the text other than to rotate the block (ie. not the letters or text). I do note, however, that this nicely shows how spine text in French usually goes from bottom to top, whereas in English (and it seems, Khmer) books it usually runs top to bottom.