Re: [emacs-bidi] status? news?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 17:57:17 +0330 (IRT)
> From: Roozbeh Pournader <address@hidden>
> 
> > ???  How can the editor insert an RLM?  The editor doesn't have any
> > idea what the user means when she types an exclam.
> 
> When the user types the exclamation mark while being in English keyboard
> mode, the editor finds that the exclamation should be treated L2R.

That's possible, but it has a couple of disadvantages:

  - If the user inserts an exclam into an already existing text, and
    if the current input method is not for a R2L language, the exclam
    will go to a wrong place.  This might confuse users, because they
    don't expect a key such as `!' to behave differently in different
    situations.

  - Text which comes from a source that is not the keyboard cannot be
    treated that way.  And since not all applications support RLM and
    other Unicode special characters, this is a real problem.

Therefore, I'd prefer this case to be handled correctly
automatically.  I cannot understand why doesn't UTR9 handle the exclam
like this by default.  Can you tell?

> If the buffer is visual, it checks the embedding levels of the two
> adjacent characters.

Why would you need embedding in a visual buffer?