RE: Bidirectional Bugs in Hebrew (fwd)

[Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir technion ac il>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 13:37:15 +0200
From: Jonathan Rosenne <rosenne qsm co il>
Reply-To: Ivrix Discussions <ivrix-discuss ivrix org il>
To: Ivrix Discussions <ivrix-discuss ivrix org il>
Subject: RE: Bidirectional Bugs in Hebrew (fwd)

I would be grateful if someone could post this to gtk-i18n.

The bidi algorithm is defined at http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr9/

The soft hyphen is not a good idea, because it is supposed to be displayed
only at a line break. LRO/PDF is not a good idea, because it is an overkill
and because not all bidi platforms support it. I suggest changing to English
for the telephone numbers, this is equivalent to using LRE/PDF and supported
by most bidi software. Another alternative is to surround each minus with
RLMs. A macro could be defined to do it conveniently.

Jony

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 21:28:26 +0200
> From: Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>
> To: gtk-i18n-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: Bidirectional Bugs in hebrew
>
> Kaixo!
>
> On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 10:38:23AM -0700, Chookij Vanatham wrote:
>
> >] Problem: when writing in hebrew (and RTL direction) a letter
> and then "-"
> >] and a number
> > This is because of Bidirection algorithm which doesn't define
> "minus sign"
> > as the R type (Right to Left)
>
> All mathematical signs aren't supposed to be strong LTR ?
> (But I agree it isn't a "minus sign", but it seems however to be treated
> as a "minus sign" when it is followed by a number).
>
> > which is a strong type. This is because "minus
> > sign" in hebrew will have different direction than Left-to-Right script,
>
> You mean the opposite I suppose...
>
> > The bidirection algorihm is used with multi-scripts and not just
> > specific to hebrew.
>
> Even with multi-scripts that are all LTR ? That would be a pure waste.
> I know of only three RTL scripts in unicode: Arabic (including
> all the chars
> used for non Arabic languages), Hebrew (including all the dots and Yiddish
> letters), and Syriac.
> Are there others ?
>
> > ] And if we use soft hyphen (0xad, available in iso-8859-6 (Arabic),
> > ] iso-8859-8 (Hebrew), cp1255 (Hebrew + Yiddish), cp1256
> (Arabic+Farsi+Urdu))
> > ] would it produce a rtl string ?
> >
> > I haven't tried this but I think, you should get the same result because
> > "soft hyphen" would not be the R type like hebrew alphabet.
>
> but shouldn't a neutral char inherit the "default" direction (in this case
> being RTL if you write in Hebrew.
>
> Well, I'll try it...
> It works!:
>
> chanae:~$ echo AA-123BB | fribidi
> BB-123AA
> chanae:~$ echo AA­123BB | fribidi
> BB123­AA
>
> Now that should be put somewhere in a FAQ.
>
> > Because you are using this in unicode locale, so, you can try typing
> > RLO or RLE before typing "minus sign" to force the direction to
> be Right to
> > left,
>
> Of course; but that isn't very userfriendly.
> Having the keyboard map send a soft hyphen (0x00ad) when in
> Hebrew/Arabic mode
> instead of a "minus" (0x002d) (the numeric keypad should always send
> a 0x002d however, IMHO).
> That would allow much easier typing.
>
> A real life example: "8-bit" in Hebrew: "8-ב" gives "ב8-" which is wrong;
> and "8­ב" gives the right "ב­8".
> When people are typing text they want the hyphen to follow the direction
> of writting; so having the kbd send a soft hyphen seems a good solution.
> What do you think about that ?
>
> And are there any implications in using 0x00ad instead of 0x002d for
> "hyphen" meaning in Hebrew/Arabic strings ?
>
> > I haven't tried it but I think fribidi should work with
> RLO,RLE,PDF as well.
> > For the keyboard input, not too sure if gtk+1.3 is enabled to
> allow users
> > to input those RLO, RLE, PDF codes.
>
> AFAIK Gtk+ doesn't handle the keyboard; X11 does.
>
> --
> Ki חa vos vוye bיn,
> Pablo Saratxaga
>
> http://www.srtxg.easynet.be/		PGP Key available, key ID:
> 0x8F0E4975
>
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