First, thank you for your reply to my posting yesterday--as usual, immediate and helpful!
Another problem we're having is with the display of the Thaana script. This is a right-to-left script, Unicode range 0780 to 07BF. Java's display of this is buggy (and I do think the problem is with Java, not specifically with XXE). In particular, while the first line of a Thaana paragraph is rendered on-screen right-to-left, succeeding lines are rendered left-to-right. This may be a problem only with the Windows implementation of Java, although I have not been able to test this. Java is of course capable of displaying Arabic or Hebrew right to left, and even moving the insertion point correctly, although the visible display of the cursor is wrong in these languages. XXE does not support the common 'dir' attribute, which would allow <para>s and other elements to be marked as 'rtl'. Nor does XXE support the CSS2 'direction' property. Of course, given that Java has problems with right-to-left scripts already, this might not solve the problem. We have found one work-around that does result in correct right-to-left display of Thaana: we put a Unicode RLE (Right-to-left embedding) character (U+202B) at the beginning of any run of Thaana script (i.e. immediately after the open <para>, <phrase> etc. tag), and an LRE character (U+202A) at the end. (One might think that the opening RLE would be sufficient to at least start right-to-left dispaly, but it isn't; the close LRE character seems necessary as well.) One problem with this work-around is that we might need to create a keystroke (or templates) to insert these characters. More problematic is the fact that the characters are invisible (zero width), making it hard for authors to correctly position the cursor, and also making it possible to accidentally delete the characters and not even know it (until text starts showing up wrong--but that might not happen until you narrow the screen, forcing wrapping, etc.). If we could colorize runs of Thaana text that did (or didn't) start and end with these characters, that would be a partial solution. But I can't find anything in CSS that would allow me to do this. I've also tried putting the Unicode RLE character in an attribute of the <para> tag, instead of in the text element, but of course CSS ignores that. We've even tried altering the font to render the RLE and LRE characters as non-zero width characters, but if that's possible, it's not easy. Any suggestions? (Any chance that the CSS2 'direction' property will be supported soon?) Mike Maxwell -- XMLmind XML Editor Support List [email protected] http://www.xmlmind.com/mailman/listinfo/xmleditor-support
