Re: [gtk-list] Re: Bi-Di support

[Steve Hosgood <iisteve iiweeble swan ac uk>]

Bi-Di?
Hah! Childs play :-)

When I was a lad, we had to write Boustrophedon(*) support in machine code!


Though I mention it jokingly, such support would probably be very useful to
a small number of researchers. More importantly, (and I'm surprised it
doesn't get mentioned more often) is top to bottom support for various
Asian languages.

I once read an interesting paper (by Xerox in about 1980?) on the subject of
supporting multiple character-sets and mixed directionality in a word-
processor. They'd researched it pretty well - indeed I think Unicode was
partly inspired by their work. Trouble is, I've lost the paper.

                            --------------------

(*) Boustrophedon: like the motion of an Ox ploughing a field, i.e right to
left on one line, left to right on the line below etc etc. It would be
needed if you wanted to display ancient cuneoform texts (and maybe others?).

--

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