Proposal: Introduction of Neutral Override Character

Hi,

After reading Behdad's excellent summary of the current state of 
BiDi in Gtk, I realized that the problem that Behdad describes 
on Slide 11 could easily be solved by the introduction of a new
unicode control character "Neutral Override". This new unicode
character should have similar functionality to:

   202D;LEFT-TO-RIGHT OVERRIDE;Cf;0;LRO;;;;;N;;;;;
   202E;RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE;Cf;0;RLO;;;;;N;;;;;

And I suggest that for the time being we give the new character
the definition:

   20EB;NEUTRAL OVERRIDE;Cf;0;NO;;;;;N;;;;;
   
The effect of the character is terminated by PDF. The effect
of the character should be different than LRO and RLO though,
as it will not change the properties of the characters within
its range, but will only prevent the use of the range for
the purpose of seeking a base direction.

If we implement this addition in pango and fribidi, we get an 
acceptable solution for Gtk2. All that is needed then in order 
to solve the layout problem of slide 11 is to wrap the name in 
a NO/PDF pair as follows :

   <NO>Behdad<PDF>: 

If we accept this solution we should also send in a proposal
to the Unicode consortium to make this a formal addition to 
the standard.

The actual implementation would take Behdad ~5min, and me 
~1h. ;-)

Regards,
Dov