Re: Re: Concerning the hyphen confusion in BiDi (was: Re: Bidirectional Bugs in Hebrew)

[Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>]

Kaixo!

On Mon, Nov 13, 2000 at 08:55:30PM +0200, Uri David Akavia wrote:
 
> > Well, the problem is that it is legimate (if rarer) to want to 
> > really type   hebrew letter + negative number without an
> > intervening space.
> > 
> > So, how is the software going to know which was meant?
> 
> In my opinion, if someone wants to type something that complicated, he can
> switch to english.

I see here and there references to "switching to English"; that is simply
not possible, because it doesn't exist! A plain text has absolutely NO
information about languages, at all.

Maybe you wanted to say "switch to LTR" ? That is, inserting the char
that tells that the writting direction changes to LTR (I forgot its name);
that is, indeed, a possibility; but for that the keyboard layouts need
to be able to send those 2 chars to force the direction of writting.

Another possibility (the one I prefer for this case) is having both minus
and a neutral (that is following the writting direction without exceptions)
hyphen sign.

In Hebrew kbd mode, the hyphen woul be used; in latin kbd mode, and in the
"-" key of the keypad, the minus sign would be used.

> > There is no really _method_ in my description; I'm simply describing
> > how the data should be stored. If you can describe when you
> > would insert RLM, we can probably make GTK+'s input code
> > do it, but the trouble is figuring when you should insert that
> > RLM.
>
> Could you tell me how to input RLM in Pango

Pango must never add any RLM or LTR char!
It is to the user to input them (or to a smart input program); pango only
displays text strings passed to it, *without modifying them*.

This thread started because of something that was thought to be a bug in
pango; but it turned out that pango was right, and the problem was on the
text, and so it continued on how to type in a logical (logical for the user
typing it) way to produce the desired effect.

So now it is not a pango thread anymore, but a keyboard layout/input program
thread.

-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://www.srtxg.easynet.be/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0x8F0E4975