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

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:54:18 +0200
> 
> Andreas Schwab <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >> Translated into Emacs-speak, this means we need a variable that, when
> >> bound to some special value, instructs the reordering engine to treat
> >> certain characters as segment separators.
> >
> > They already exist: comment-start and comment-end, for example.
> 
> I am having a somewhat hard time imagining it as a good thing if Emacs
> displays source code that does no longer correspond to a reasonably
> straightforward manner of printing the file.  reordering source into
> something that "makes more sense" seems quite more invasive than mere
> font-locking.

Please explain what you mean by "no longer corresponds".  If a comment
or a string in a source file use R2L scripts, how would you like Emacs
to display them?  If the answer is in their original logical order,
then how is the user staring at the source supposed to read those
comments and strings?

As for printing, don't modern printers and associated software already
reorder text when they print?  If not, we may be able to use Emacs
facilities to DTRT here.

> I am not fond of the idea of writing code that gets unreadable unless
> you read it back with Emacs, or even a specific version of Emacs or
> specific settings.

??? The discussion was about _displaying_, no one suggested writing
anything to the file.  The idea was to use _existing_ characters or
strings that delimit the relevant portions of source as a cue for
reordering those delimited parts in some way that makes them readable.