Re: Multiple Directions (was: Re: Coptic/Greek (Re: Phoenician))

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Sat May 15 2004 - 20:40:48 CDT

  • Next message: Mark E. Shoulson: "Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)"

    I thought a lot of the hassle of the bidi algorithm was to handle
    interactions between RTL and LTR when they occur together (where do you
    break lines, etc).

    ~mark

    Jony Rosenne wrote:

    >I think what confuses the issue it the misleading symmetry between the terms
    >LTR and RTL.
    >
    >If Hebrew and Arabic were simply written from right to left there would be
    >no need for a bidi algorithm and the direction would be a simple
    >presentation issue.
    >
    >However, in Hebrew and Arabic, numbers are written left to right and so are
    >Latin and other LTR script quotations. So RTL really means mixed direction,
    >and the bidi algorithm is there to handle it automatically with little user
    >intervention.
    >
    >All of this is completely irrelevant to boustraphedon and vertical scripts.
    >These are presentation issues that have not need for Unicode support.
    >
    >Jony
    >
    >
    >

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