Re: Bidirectional text and URLs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: chad <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 15:39:15 -0800
> Cc: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>,
>  address@hidden,
>  address@hidden,
>  address@hidden
> 
> 
> > On 30 Nov 2014, at 07:20, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > I'm sorry, but this is not instrumental: it doesn't specify what
> > "misleading" means.  We need a detailed spec for that. 
> 
> Given things we're already identifying the URL in text, is it
> possible/easy to check for a different directionality of any part
> of a URL text (including the entire url) compared to the text (not
> whitespace) before and after the URL?

Yes, but this would only be a sign of trouble if the rest of buffer
text is strictly left to right.  And even then, there are legitimate
URLs that have RTL characters, e.g. in Google queries.

So I don't see how this would help.

> In order to make phishing-style surprises work, the mal-ordered
> text probably wants to have the left-side string "http[s]://" and
> the right-side string "//:[s]ptth", right?

I don't think we can count on that.  Villains might surprise us.  This
is just one example.

But if someone does the research and comes up with such a conclusion,
then yes, it makes our job easier.