Re: `C-b' is backward-char, `left' is left-char - why?

[Ehud Karni]

On Fri, 03 Jun 2011 18:08:57 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
DK> If this is a LR paragraph (like it likely is), left will move right
DK> in the RRRRRR section and vice versa.
>
> True.
>
DK> This is what Hebrew writers expect?
>
> Yes.

I don't agree with you.  This is not what I expect, nor any bidi
novice, this is what Microsoft and openoffice has forced all the
bidi users to live with.

I expect a strict visual movement, i.e. the right arrow moves the
cursor to the right, left arrow moves to the left, no matter what
the language or the paragraph direction.

I think I know why Microsoft (and following them, openoffice) did
this non intuitive choice - They use shift+arrow to select text
strings and the string must be in adjacent memory locations.

Firefox (on Gnu/Linux and MS Windows) works in a strict visual manner
when the arrows are used without shift.  When shift+arrow is used (text
select) it behaves the same as openoffice (moves according to the
logical order).

It is interesting to check how KDE4, Gnome3 and Google Chrome are
behaving.


Ehud.


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