Re: [Fresco-devel] Babylon Strings

> At rendertime a bidir-reordered line can be requested by asking for the
> visual-ordered part of the text (String get_visible_order(startpos,
> endpos) or something similar).
Perhaps strings should have a simple is_bidi() property that would only 
matter to the renderer but could be accessed through the API if necessary?

> The nice thing is that the Handler-classes can go: String can be a
> simple class without any need to trick it into having two different
> implementations to hide the bidir-mapping process. Downside: That
> process isen't hidden:-(
Perhaps if the API is crafted well enough that won't matter.  For 
instance, if there are iterators to access characters in the string, does 
it matter if that iterator acts like a regular iterator or a reverse 
iterator?

> Are there some API docs from other unicode libraries? How do they handle
> this issue? Pango isen't much help here, it's primarily a rendering
> library, so there's no clear distinction between Unicode algorithmns and
> rendering functionality.
I know for myself (who isn't well-versed in unicode/bidi issues) perhaps a
big list of use cases would be helpful.  There should be ways to engineer
this so that app developers never need to know how a string is displayed,
just move it around as an object (e.g. display string A in textbox B
without any layout work).  I may be way off base here, though, so many
apologies if I am.  :-)  By the way, I'm glad people are concerned with
this kind of stuff, it's important and no one seems to work on it...


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           Sean Rae / es9
        cool and calculating
       www.birdnest.org/raes1
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