Re: Bidirectional text and URLs

[Richard Stallman]

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  > > This suggests we need to provide a primitive to tell Lisp programs a
  > > guaranteed answer for which direction the text at a certain point is
  > > displayed in.

  > The directionality of the text is determined by the display engine,
  > and by design is not subject to control by Lisp programs,

I think we are talking about different issues.  You're talking about
whether Lisp programs control the directionality.  I'm talking about
providing a way for them to inquire what display will do.

  > > Also, a primitive to verify that a certain region of text has no
  > > bidi strangeness within it.

  > We need to have a good instrumental definition of "bidi strangeness"
  > for that.

I suggest the definition: whatever would cause the displayed order of
characters to be perhaps misleading if the text is interpreted as a
URL or anything else with programatic significance.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
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