Dov Feldstern wrote:
Hi!
*) Abdel said: "I personally tend to think that the only clear
option, one that does not leave room for complicated interpretation
is to go for screen oriented movement: right is right and left is
left. Of course supporting both mode would be better."
+1. Yes, I agree that visual mode is clearer. However, it has its own
problems: *) A selection may not be logically contiguous
On this point, I think we should not try to be too clever, the solution
is simple really:
During the selection process, when a RTL snippet is found within an LTR
text, the full snippet should be selected: i.e. the same as we do for
insets.
*) Under this interpretation, what should the "backspace" key mean?
Delete the previous character, or delete the character to the left of
the cursor (where the arrow points)? It's not the same thing in
RTL... And which character does the "delete" key delete? Depending on
your answer to the previous question, "delete" and "backspace" may
actually delete the same character, which doesn't make too much
sense. So it's pretty clear (and that seems to be the consensus in
other programs, as well), that backspace should still delete the
logically previous character, even in visual mode.
Agreed: backspace and delete are logical keys not visual.
*) Andre said: "As a plain non-RTL-user I'd think the same. But of
course the vote of someone actually using it should count more."
+2. Yes, it is a rather humorous to hear all these opinions about
whether or not this or that approach makes sense, given by people who
have never written in Bidi.
Not being a bidi writer does not mean I will never be ;-) and please
note that I already said that we should keep both mode if possible.
) --- so please, instead of giving opinions about which approach does
or does not make sense from the user's point of view, it would be
much more helpful if you could help us out with the technical,
programmatic, issues (and of course, make sure that nothing that we
do interferes with reguar, non-bidi users). We've offered a few
patches, but we need help working out the technical details, and you
guys understand those better than we do. That's where we really need
your help.
...
If you have any technical comments about these patches, let's work
them out. Otherwise, let's please commit them?
I had comments about the goto about which I asked others to state their
opinion. I implemented the isRTL() method specifically for Elazar's
patch; so it's not like we don't help at all... If you want more Dov,
you should be proactive and ask for commit access. You seem to be very
cautious so I don't think JMarc will deny it. And at last we will have
someone in charge of this stuff.
About you reverseDirection() patch, I am not sure that all RTL users
will agree with you that the outer paragraph should drive the cursor
movement. As I said, this is fine for small insets but not for
multi-paragraph insets. I think we should try to implement something
similar to Elazar's patch for mathed instead. If you can't do that then
I'll apply your patch temporarily.
Abdel.
