From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Mon Aug 01 2005 - 20:38:10 CDT
Gregg Reynolds wrote:
> John Hudson wrote:
>
>> Jony Rosenne wrote:
>>
>>> I object. The proposal, were it to be accepted, would create havoc.
>>
>>
>>
>> I agree. The Unicode bidi algorithm is basically fine. The fact that
>
>
> Maybe so. I admit it is an impressive piece of work. And even
> useful, if you need to mix language directionalities in your text.
>
> Unfortunately, that is not what this is about. I'll say it yet again:
> Arabic (like other RTL written languages) is *monodirectional*. Where
> this idea of "inherent" bidirectionality got started I'd like to know,
> so I could deliver a scrumptious knuckle sandwich. Anybody who still
> buys into this pernicious piece of mythology is welcome to email me,
> and I will try to put the worms out of your head.
>
Unicode has, for reasons of consistency and other kinds of sanity, seen
fit to declare that decimal-coded numbers shall be encoded
most-significant-digit first. Why that order? Who cares? It suffices
that they needed there to be *one* ordering. It's not about Arabic
being "inherently bidirectional", that's a consequence of the fact that
the imposed ordering goes against it. Unfair to the Arabic-writers?
Probably, but them's the breaks when standards happen. RTL is in the
minority and gets the short end of the stick sometimes (and for other
reasons). You might have *some* claim wrt Arabic numerals (by which I
mean those digits used when writing Arabic; you know what I mean), but
Israelis use just plain ol' ordinary numbers like the rest of the
Western world, and nobody will believe that it's a "different" 7 in
David than in Times.
~mark
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