Re: arrow keys vs. C-f/b/n/p

[W Dan Meyer]

Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>> One possibility is that editors intended specifically for bidi, such as
>> native-language Hebrew or Arabic apps, have a convention that vim,
>> gedit, etc have not taken up.  So, could anyone who has experience with
>> such apps speak up?
>
>
> Looking around on the internet (not being a bidi reader) it seems to
> me that it is mostly a programming mistake to let the arrow keys
> change direction. (Somehow maybe also from a beginners perspective the
> right arrow might mean "go forward".) However for someone editing
> texts in some way this is awkward IMO. Here are some links:
>
> - 
> http://www.sfc.wide.ad.jp/~akihiko/java/jdk1.2beta3/docs/guide/2d/spec/j2d-fonts.fm1.html
> (look for "moving the caret").
>
> - http://wiki.sibawayhi.org/keyboard - READING IS NOT CURSORING!
>
> - http://bugs.dojotoolkit.org/ticket/8037 (just a short complaints
> about cursor changing their ways)
>
> - http://www.qsm.co.il/Hebrew/logicUI22.htm - "The logical approach is
> sometimes preferred by implementors, mostly because its implementation
> is easier. This is not a recommended solution."

Nice reesearch.

I agree with those findings.

For me it looks all right to have those forward-backward bindings. For
few reasons:

- C-{f,b} is used mostly by experienced Emacs users, if they don't like
  they will most likely change it (I am sure you can contradict it, I
  have never learnt to use them)

- Obviously it was said before, forward-backward means forward-backward
  not left-right. 

- We have a choice, we can use C-{f,b} to preserve the logical
  direction, plus we add the functonality to rebind it if is
  needed. Question if that should be mode, global state and a set of
  functions

- if it will not work as expected (I think there must be an agreement
  how the programs behave in the right-left direction over the world),
  we will get kind e-mails saying so (I hope kind ;) )

- everything dependes on a person, if somebody is not a native
  speaker/writer in such language and writes a letter probably it will be
  cumbersome to use reversed bindings, it is easier to read the text
  read-left than swapping keys (muscle memory, and the fact one is forced
  to read, it cannot be done in a different way).
 
So from my point of view maybe good idea is to:

- Let the user swap arrows too (or the underlaying implementation, well it
  can be done by binding just different symbol),

- Find a person which uses bidi, not in Emacs but generally and ask if
  he/she would prefered this behaviour. 

- Switching even OpenOffice to the right-left mode and check the default

Just mine 2 cents.

Wojciech