Re: Changes in latin-ltx.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden (Dave Love)
> Date: 21 Dec 2001 17:06:52 +0000
> 
>  > Make one input method for mathematical symbols and another one for
>  > Greek/Hebrew/... text.
> 
> You're welcome to, but I want a generic method which I stand some
> chance of being able to use.

If you want latin-ltx.el to include all of the Hebrew characters, I
can only welcome that.  But then please (a) provide _all_ of the
Hebrew characters, not just the first 4, and (b) please provide a way
to type the Hebrew letter-like math symbols (Aleph to Daleth), because
those are different characters in Unicode.

The current situation is IMHO misleading: there are only 4 Hebrew
letters in latin-ltx, which suggests they are the left-to-right
symbols, but they actually produce the right-to-left letters instead.

>  > Maybe this "if you have two alternatives, choose both" thing is
>  > getting old, but maybe it's the right thing in this case.
> 
> There's no point in having alternatives if the user doesn't know which
> one to choose.

Those who don't know will randomly choose one of the two alternatives,
with no more harm than if you offer them only one (randomly chosen by
you) alternative.  Those who _do_ know will choose the right
alternative; those are the ones I care for and want to cater to.  The
mnemonic we define for each one of the alternatives might help them
make the right choice; they can also use "C-u C-x =" for more detailed
info.

Yes, having two characters that are almost identical is a mess.  But
for better or for worse, Unicode does define two different codepoints
with slightly different attributes in this case, and we have no good
alternative but support both of them.  Selecting only one alternative
is bound to screw some user somewhere.  The bidi reordering produces a
terribly messed up display when you mix Hebrew letters with symbols
and math operators; anyone who have seen that mess will I think
understand why we need to distinguish clearly between the
right-to-left letters and the left-to-right symbols.