On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 6:56 PM Zeev Suraski <z...@php.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 5:37 PM Nikita Popov <nikita....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm certainly not a domain expert in RTL languages. I'd be happy to drop
>> hebrev() from this RFC if someone can bring forward a good technical
>> argument as to why these functions are still necessary and where they would
>> be used.
>>
>
> I do insist you have it backwards - you need a good technical argument as
> to why these functions should be removed - i.e., what negative value do
> they bring to the table that would be sorted out by their elimitation
> (which could even be "pushing people towards using something that I
> consider better", but even that is not available). This is key, and went
> completely ignored.
>
> That said:
>
>
>> However, and given your comment here I may have just missed this between
>> other mail, I have not actually seen any technical argument on this topic.
>> The only thing I found was a namedrop of "IBM i" without any explanation of
>> the significance this has for Hebrew text or the hebrev() function
>>
>
> IBM i is not a namedrop at all. Basically, any platform that has no
> built-in RTL support (IBM i being one of them, there are many more) would
> benefit from hebrev(). As a matter of fact, I just recalled that this is
> even useful under Windows (I used it myself a few months ago and forgot
> about it) - as the Windows shell doesn't render logical Hebrew either. For
> instance, if you have the following files in C:\somedir:
>
> C:\somedir\ניקיטה
> C:\somedir\קאל
>
> (that's Nikita and Kalle)
>
> The following script:
> ----
> <?php
> $d = opendir("c:\\somedir");
> while ($f = readdir($d)) {
> print "$f\n";
> }
> ---
>
> Would generate the following output:
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjs8jwypmy7nvay/Hebrew%20Logical.PNG?dl=0
>
> When fixed with hebrev():
> ----
> <?php
> $d = opendir("c:\\somedir");
> while ($f = readdir($d)) {
> print hebrev($f)."\n";
> }
> ---
>
> It will display the correct output:
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/wss5fswd9gqj5vk/Hebrew%20Visual.PNG?dl=0
>
> I'm *almost* sure that you'd get the same results on Linux.
>
> Simply put - hebrev() is super useful for CLI apps.
>
> The fact it's nowadays thankfully uncommon for HTML to be based on visual
> encodings, doesn't mean visual representations have disappeared. They're
> still there in all sorts of legacy situations - including legacy scenarios
> in modern OSs (the above is from Windows 10 1903).
>
Thanks Zeev, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. As you
make a case for a possible legitimate use-case, I'm dropping the hebrev()
deprecation from this RFC, so that the proposal only covers hebrevc() now.
(As a side note, it would be great if this kind of information also made it
into the documentation for hebrev().)
Nikita
