Re: bidi-display-reordering is now non-nil by default

[Stefan Monnier]

> Emacs should really avoid formatting things with L2R marks that are not
> actually required.

And then

> Is there a reason nobody responded to my repeated proposal to let
> `format' deal with inserting L2R marks?

AFAICT these two are contradictory.  To only insert them when they are
really needed, we need additional hints that only a human can give.
Hence the new function.  Doing it in format would risk doing it in many
more cases where they're not actually indispensable.

But in any case, the bidi support in Emacs-24.1 is just a first step.
Clearly we'll need more work to make it work well.  The most obvious
case being R2L strings within programming and markup languages: adding
LRM marks in them would be needed to have them display correctly, but
at the same time we really don't want to add those LRM marks in the
corresponding file (nor in copy&paste text).

I think arguing about how best to solve problems in gnus-sum is futile
until we've figured out how to solve the problem for
markup&programming modes.
And in the mean time, using string-mark-left-to-right seems like
a fine stopgap.


        Stefan