[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 152125] New: Ease use of Unicode control characters for bidirectionality, e.g. RLI and PDI

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152125

            Bug ID: 152125
           Summary: Ease use of Unicode control characters for
                    bidirectionality, e.g. RLI and PDI
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: 7.5.0.0 alpha0+ Master
          Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64)
                OS: Windows (All)
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Keywords: needsUXEval
          Severity: normal
          Priority: medium
         Component: Writer
          Assignee: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: rb.henschel at t-online.de
                CC: libreoffice-ux-advise at lists.freedesktop.org

Created attachment 183681
  --> https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/attachment.cgi?id=183681&action=edit
Examples with RTL in LTR

If you have a text run with strong RTL characters in a paragraph with base
direction left-to-right, the implementation of the BiDi-Algorithm in
LibreOffice works well.
But there are situations where bidirectional text is not rendered as necessary
if only using the BiDi-Algorithm. Since ODF has no attribute to set the base
direction on a portion of text, but only on the paragraph, such situations need
to be solved by inserting Unicode control characters. Such are:
(1) LRI, RLI, FSI, PDI (U+2066..U+2069)
(2) LRE, RLE, LRO, RLO, PDF (U+202A..U202E)
(3) LRM, RLM (U+200E, U+200F)

Problem A
You cannot see, which one is used and where it is inserted because all this
characters are hidden and have zero width. That is a problem when you need to
edit the text. Using control characters (2) is problematic, but if you do not
see them it is hard to remove such, for example.

Problem B
LibreOffice supports to enter the control characters (3). That is in Insert >
Formatting Mark > Left-to-Right Mark and Right-to-Left Mark. But there exists
no tool for the control characters (1) and (2). Entering them directly into the
text via U+NNNN and Alt+x is very problematic, because character order might
change while entering them.

A solution for A could be, to show the illustration glyphs (that with the
dotted border in the Unicode chart files) when "Show Formatting Marks" is ON.

I have no idea for a good tool to enter these controls.

You should use the attachment and try to bring the sentence which has no
control character into the correct word order. Then you will notice the
problems for the user.

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