Hi Mathew,
I think you are being a bit unfair towards Vafa!
LaTeX, et al are highly complex. The advent of unicode has not made things
easier.
The problem is not that bidi or the other package is "faulty", but in the way it
is done, so that when then two are used together the result is not what is
expected
by the average user.
Adding support often means changing the way certain TeX commands work so that
the expected result comes out.
Also, many packages do not give the expected result when you switch from LTR to
RTL. The fault is not necessarily that of the author of a package, because the
never thought
of using RTL. Now, if some uses such a package and is using bidi, too, the
result is not what
is expected. So that person complains to Vafa, because the other package seems
to work
properly! So, as you can see that it is not Vafa, fault. Is it Vafa
responsibility to make sure
all other packages support all features that bidi needs! NO. That should be the
responsibility of the
author of the other package.
So what Vafa, does is try to figure out why and how the other package does
something and
change that "flaw"(I should say short coming).
If you have ever written a non-trivial package or environment, you would
understand.
Everythings seems to work dandy. Then, you add another package to your text and
things
break!!!
regards
Keith.
Am 24.09.2011 um 00:49 schrieb msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca:
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011, VAFA KHALIGHI wrote:
>> When I started as the maintainer of bidi, I contacted some of the
>> package/class authors unfortunately no one even bothered to reply back (at
>> least saying, no I do not have time or I do not know how to do it) and
>> indeed that is why bidi itself, support so many packages.
>
> Knowing that your attitude is that compatibility is everybody else's
> job and not yours, I sure wouldn't have been quick to reply to you if I
> were one of those package maintainers.
>
> Perhaps it's not really what you meant to say, but when I read this
> comment of yours:
>
>> it is not the duty of bidi package to add support for other packages but
>> other packages themselves have to add bidi support. bidi should only support
>
> it created a very negative impression. I get the idea that some of your
> difficulties with other package maintainers may be to some extent of your
> own making.
>
> My own point of view is that compatiblity should involve effort and
> accomodation on *both* sides.
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