On Friday, 11 April 2025 at 01:18, Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote:

> But the tricky part, as you stated in your first message, is that in some 
> cases arrows need to follow the visual directionality of surrounding 
> characters, while in other cases they need to ignore surrounding characters 
> and truly mean “left” or “right.”
> 
> This is why adding the existing arrows to the “mirrored” list would merely 
> swap one problem for another, and why you suggested a mirroring control 
> character.
> 
> --
> Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org

Exactly. I never seem to choose my words well enough - as you correctly 
understood, when I said "make available", I meant with the use of a control 
character. This behavior _cannot_ be applied to existing unmodified arrow 
characters - it would violate the Unicode stability policy.

My original suggestion was to add new arrow characters which would each have 
the Bidi_Mirrored=Yes proprety. MANY new arrow characters. Every existing 
horizontal arrow would have needed a variant with this property. This was not 
the best idea, but it started the conversation.

The current suggestion is to apply this behavior to existing characters using a 
modifier/control character.

Thank you for helping to clarify the current status.

I have some thoughts about the ramifications of such a control character, and 
other control characters that naturally "fall out" when considering it. I feel 
like I have convinced enough of the participants here that this idea has merit, 
so I will share these thoughts here soon, under a new title.


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