Hi On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Akber Choudhry wrote:
> A preliminary analysis of the ECMA bidi specs, TR-053, reveals that bidi > is a function of a character imaging device. > > [quote] > Applications that are designed to handle bi-directional data streams can > fully control the functionality of a bidirectional > device. Such applications are called "bi-directionality-aware" > applications. > On the other hand, there is a need to allow applications not designed to > handle bi-directional data streams to > function reasonably well in a bi-directional environment, making this > environment "transparent" to the application. > Such applications are called "bi-directionality-unaware" applications. > [/quote] > > The X server is a character imaging device, and VT102 (the original dumb > terminal) is one too. Is the X server a character imaging device? You basically require the X server to keep track of characters tht it needs to "print". Handling a single request is easy. But figuring that several requests belong in the same "context" (e.g: several lines are part of the same paragraph, the selection) is harder. > It appears that the X server should provide bidi > funcationality to character streams emanating from bi-di-unaware > applications while Xterm (as a VT emulator) should be a bidi-aware > application that sends out (optionally) bidi-compliant stream to the X > server. If you want some approximation (doesn't work at the server level, but does not require recompilation of any sort): see he following hack: http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/R2L Maybe a similar hack can be implemented at the X server level (I have no idea if the X server recieves complete strings). Anyway, this is a hack. It is probably only worth the effort if the effort is not big. All in all, the fact that bidi *is* being implemented in applications means that there is less incentive to put much effort in adding bidi support in the X server. -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir _______________________________________________ I18n mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/i18n
