Re: GTK internationalization, right-to-left languages

[Tom Tromey <tromey cygnus com>]

>>>>> "Nimrod" == Nimrod Zimerman <zimerman@earthling.net> writes:

>> The Unicode standard has a chapter on rendering multi-language
>> text.  It is quite complicated.  If somebody is seriously
>> considering implementing this, I'd recommend buying and reading the
>> Unicode book as a sensible first step.

Nimrod> This might be a good idea, but one can possibly do without it.

Perhaps.  The "Bidirection Behavior" section in my copy of the Unicode
book is 8 pages of text.  It turns out there *are* explicit
directional overrides, as well as "weak" characters (those which
follow the prevailing direction instead of having a direction of their
own).  From what I can tell, Arabic and Hebrew are the only r-to-l
scripts, but I'm not entirely sure I didn't miss one.

Anyway, my only point is that this document was obviously written by
experts who cared.  It would be silly to try to reinvent it.

For those who care, the book also has some interesting thoughts on
editing.  Not to mention the many tables with peculiar characters.  My
personal fave: U+2638, aka "Wheel of Dharma".

Tom