What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Nick Lamb — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 15:39:56 GMT

Both of today's articles seem like good places to explain why UAX #9 3.3.1 either isn't implemented or is overridden by "higher protocols" that don't have any context hints.

In the text editor on this computer, for example, when I open a document written in Hebrew it is all displayed as RTL paragraphs starting from the right margin.

But in Notepad on a Windows PC, it is displayed as RTL embedding in LTR paragraphs starting from the left margin. The result is that a few characters of LTR text can force the start of a sentence into the middle of the text, rarely the desired outcome.

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Michael S. Kaplan — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 15:43:35 GMT

Actually Nick, you are mistaken. On a Hebrew system (or on any system where you have changed the default reading order of Notepad explicitly, you have a text editor that has a default RTL context -- not an LTR context with embedding.

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Nick Lamb — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 19:20:44 GMT

Sure, if I switch my system to Hebrew, the text editor now defaults to RTL for new paragraphs. That's perfectly sensible.

However I don't really see how this addresses UAX #9 3.3.1 or the example I presented, except as a work around.

You really need 3.3.1 or (as in HTML) some higher level paragraph mark-up and preferably both. The default paragraph direction isn't enough. Try it.

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Michael S. Kaplan — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 19:30:40 GMT

I have tried it and fail to see a case where the reading order set to RTL on an English system gives different results than a Hebrew system. Do you see some sort of difference between the two?

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Nick Lamb — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 20:18:31 GMT

"Do you see some sort of difference between the two?"

No. Why would there be any difference?

The Unicode BiDi algorithm gets this right (you should be able to test that easily enough) but Windows text widgets don't. Perhaps a text widget does have a "higher protocol" internally but that's not much of an excuse in an application.

If you're having trouble understanding this then it explains why you didn't see the significance of my suggested example for the selections articles. Hebrew paragraphs don't start in the middle of the text, and neither do English ones.

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Michael S. Kaplan — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 20:53:29 GMT

Nick,

I guess you just have a better parser of text than I. Because this conversation makes NO sense to me.

You claimed "But in Notepad on a Windows PC, it is displayed as RTL embedding in LTR paragraphs starting from the left margin."

This is not true, that is not how the Reading Order setting works. I said as much.

You then started making a new point without actually explaining what you mant in the original point.

And now you are claiming Unicode gets something right while Microsoft does not and have still not bothered to explain why.

So I guess I will yield at this point, since it makes no sense to have either a conversation or an argument if only one person understands what is going on.

But in any case it is a separate point than this post, so there is no point in having the conversation HERE in the post about directional marks. Let's try to keep it on topic....

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Michael S. Kaplan — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 02:58:36 GMT

This has nothing to do with the directional marks! Whuich is what this post is about.

Please put them in the post that referred to this issue you wanted a better example of. Future comments along this line put HERE will be removed since they are off topic.

re: What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Michael S. Kaplan — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 04:02:30 GMT

If it is about any part of Bidi other than specifically the direction marks, then it cannot be posted here. Sorry, everyone else who is not insisting on putting stuff here after being told it is off-topic. :-(

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