Summary of bidi branch?

Hi,

is there somewhere a summary of where the bidi branch stands nowadays?
How synched is it to actual developments in which branch?

I just got back from a conference where somebody doing critical
editions of Arabic text said that pretty much the only usable editor
(as in: renders characters correctly) for Unicode R-to-L was Unipad
under Windows.

Do people actually use emacs-bidi nowadays?  Does it work for writing?
Just for Hebrew, or other R-to-L scripts, too?

What about crazy things like T-to-B scripts (some Japanese and/or
Chinese variants IIRC)?

I'd be willing to try creating a Yiddish input encoding, though I'd
probably have to think quite a bit of how to encode the various
letters used in Hebrew words.  I don't think there is a standard
unambiguous transliteration scheme for those around.

-- 
David Kastrup