Re: Unicode 4.01 bidi type changes

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
> 
>>Diff gives the following list of bidi category changes.  I give examples
>>of affected texts and/or comments where I have ones.
>>
>>{PLUS SIGN,HYPHEN-MINUS}: ET -> ES
>>     :Logical:    HEBREW-10
>>     :Old visual: -10WERBEH
>>     :New visual: 10-WERBEH
>>
>>     At last!  The old behavior confused so many users!  However this
>>     also breaks stand-alone numbers:
>>
>>     :Logical:    HEBREW -10
>>     :Old visual: -10 WERBEH
>>     :New visual: 10- WERBEH
>>
>>     ?!? How are we to write signed numbers in RTL text now?!?  LRM?
>>     Also ugly...  I'm not sure it's a good idea.  And I can't see the
>>     rationale for PLUS SIGN at all.
> 
> Ok, lets move to the U+2212 MINUS SIGN then :).
> 
Perhaps that's really what they expect.  It's not going to happen 
however (I've yet to see a programm or language that will eat it in
a number).  :-[[

>>     This is a **really big change**.  I suppose every third big RTL
>>     text out there will be affected.
> 
> Unfortunately you are right.  And worse is that it takes a
> century for all software around to be updated.  Hopefully Pango
> will incorporate this in the next release, but don't ask about
> KDE, Mozilla, OO.o, blah blah...
> 
It seems that adding extra RLMs/LRMs near these chars would be a good
idea for the transition period (*cough* several years *cough*)...

-- 
Beni Cherniavsky <[email protected]>
Note: I can only read email on week-ends...