On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Mark Davis wrote:
> > >Outlook Express, at least the version you are using, has a bug;
>
> This is not a bug; it is specifically cited in the Bidirectional
> Conformance section of Chapter 3 as one of the ways a higher-level
> protocol can override the BIDI algorithm. I otherwise agree with John
> about the perversity (perversion ;-) of the examples.
>
> > change products or to change the standard and use
> > a reversable bidi.
>
> The BIDI algorithm is not reversible, and could not be made reversible
> without eliminating features that are important to the bidi community.
> This was considered at the time the bidi algorithm was developed.
Hold on there! You admit that unicode alrgorithm is *really*
not reversable? I was just bluffing because I just saw that their
is no reverse algorithm published in the standard!
Can you imagine the implications of this? Imagine somone signing
a digital unicode document. He is looking at his viewer but
what he signs is the ___bitstream___. So you claim that this guy
who might have no connection to software industry at all will be
able to run an algorithm - that does not exist - in his head?
> This thread is a waste of time.
If unicode bi-di algorithm was reversable none of this
would happen. Software developers, who are flash and blood
people, would be able to do a clean room implementation of
the algorithm and the reverse of it. The correctness of
the software could be *automatically* checked by just
reversing the view and checking it against the bitstream.
Instead of the automatic check no there are test cases
and if there is a nasty bug the reply is, oh well, sorry
for that, and plug in another fix and test case.
I feel I saw this attitude before... Is it only me?
Gaspar
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Feb 04 2002 - 18:17:49 EST