[Bidi] Automatic text direction

[Nadim Shaikli]

--- Ely Levy <elylevy at cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> I think we should create a standard for automatic text direction.
> There are few issues on how to detect the text direction (RTL or LTR)
> for example numbers should not be the setter of direction, the ability
> to manual override, split text ( for example gaim nick in english line is
> in hebrew or arabic what should be the text direction?should it be splited
> nick from one side text from the other? should it ignore the nick and
> detect it by the text?)
> What about html text?how do we ignore tags as direction setters?
> 
> the big question, can a good autodetect actually be done? or should we
> give up on it and do maunal setting only?

Are you also thinking of addressing the command-line in terminal emulators
that have Bidi support.  I'm talking about the case where one wants to do

  grep "ARABIC-3 ARABIC-2 ARABIC-1" filename

note here that bidi needs to kick-in for proper display (the numbers above
denote word entry count) as well as

  diff FILENAME-1 FILENAME-2

and in this case bidi was not supposed to have been engaged since order
does matter to convey proper context.

NOTE: All caps are non-latin bidi-required characters.

It would be ideal to find a mechanism that would not involve the use of
directional markers (ie. to add-in the proper smarts needed in bash for
it to denote proper context - when within quotes apply bidi else don't
among other things -- well maybe not bash per se, but a library call is
needed for automatic direction setting).

 - Nadim


		
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