Re: Editing and formatting characters

[bstell netscape com (Brian Stell)]

Owen Taylor wrote:

> ...
> Lets consider the individual characters first. Since they have no
> graphical reprentation in the output stream, there should not be a
> separate cursor position corresponding to them.
>
> As an example, lets use the example that has been coming up on this
> list over the last few weeks:
>
>    HEBREW TEXT [HYPHEN] [RLM] 1234
>                        ^     ^
>                        A     B
>
> There should not be cursor positions at A and B because that would
> result in having to hit the arrow key twice to at that position, which
> would be very non-inituitive.

Okay, so we are talking about editing where the control characters
are invisible.

We are also talking about a non novice: ie: someone who understands
what a [RLM] character means and how to insert it.

For this case we may in fact want to have two logical cursor
positions with one physical position.

Being able to hit the arrow key twice at that position would give
this expert user the option of being before or after the invisible
character.

Having to hit the backspace character once for the invisible
character would give them the ability to delete just that character
even if it is invisible.