Re: [Help-zile] Bidirectional support in Zi

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Sergei,

On 14 Feb 2012, at 07:32, sergei karhof wrote:
> I am sending this email to the mailing list, hoping I have been
> enabled by now (I requested admission a few hours ago, but have
> received no confirmation yet)

Thanks :)

The list is open, so you can post to it, and read replies in the archives,
or if responders use Reply-All to keep you in the Cc: list.

> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 6:18 AM, Gary V. Vaughan <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> I'm not at all convinced it's even possible to support RTL languages
>> in a text-mode editor running in a terminal emulator, and actually I'm
>> not even aware of any other text-mode editor that supports it (I haven't
>> checked, but I imagine even Emacs' support is only in GUI mode).
> 
> There are at least two text-based editors that already support RTL
> languages: Vim and Mined. The trick, for now, is to use a terminal
> that supports bidirectionality. mlterm is fine for this purpose (and
> maybe other terminals as well, but I have not looked beyond mlterm).
> But it may be possible to implement bidirectional support without
> relying on the terminal's bidirectional capability. Naturally, this
> will require an additional amount of work.

Interesting.  Then, in the first instance, what additional support is
needed in Zile/Zi to use the bidirectional facility in mlterm?  I'd have
thought it should just work if you select the appropriate font and locale?

> So, the text-mode environment should not be considered an obstacle to
> the development of bidirectional support in Zi.

A pleasant surprise to me :)

>> Also, I don't read or write, or know anyone else who reads or writes an
>> RTL language, so I am certainly the wrong person to work on such a feature,
>> as I would have no way to know whether it was working properly! ;)
> 
> No problem with that either, as I would be happy to help you with beta
> testing. I am sure that quite a few Hebrew and Arabic speakers would
> be interested in having a Lua-scriptable text editor for their
> language ;)

No doubt.

If you write lua already, or wish to learn, then please send a rough
implementation of bidi support on mlterm against one of the Lua branches
of Zile to show us what needs to be done.

Alternatively, please write or point to technical instructions on how to
support the same, and I'll try to find time to make a start on a patch.
Be aware though, that open source relies on people who are interested in
having new features working on them... I would never make use of bidi
support myself, so it's kinda low on my personal priorities...

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)