[emacs-bidi] Re: RTL support

[Gregg Reynolds]

Benjamin Riefenstahl wrote:
> Hi Eli, Gregg,
>
> To amplify a bit:
> > 
> > I _can_ tell you that bidi support is a must for Hebrew (because
> > numbers should be displayed left to right),
>
> It's the same in Arabic.  Even the traditional Arabic version of the
> digits (what are called "Indic" digits in Arabic) are written from
> left to right.  Not to mention that in modern Arabic (as in Hebrew, I
> think) there are often words in Latin script interspersed in the text,
> one just needs to think of trademarks.

Well, actually, the notion that Arabic/Hebrew et al. is bidirectional is 
a bit of brokenness inherited by Unicode.  So we're stuck with it, 
obviously, no matter how stupid it is.  It's nice to have, if you need 
to mix languages, but if you are working monolingually its unecessary.

So bidi algorithm support is a must for interpreting/generating Unicode 
and other legacy *encodings*; it is most certainly not a must for RTL 
*text*.  Vim has no support for the bidi algorithm; I use it frequently 
to work in Arabic, with no ill effect.  Hebrew is no different.

The point being simply that RTL layout makes for a perfectly usable 
editor with or without bidi support.

-gregg