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Re: A question about a small "makaf"
- To: Hetz Ben Hamo <hetz(at-nospam)il.linuxqa.com>
- Subject: Re: A question about a small "makaf"
- From: Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir(at-nospam)technion.ac.il>
- Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 18:32:40 +0200 (IST)
- Cc: Ely Levy <elylevy(at-nospam)cs.huji.ac.il>, linux ILUG <linux-il(at-nospam)linux.org.il>
- Delivered-To: linux.org.il-linux-il@linux.org.il
- In-Reply-To: <3A7EC786.F8616B60@linuxqa.com>
- Sender: linux-il-bounce(at-nospam)cs.huji.ac.il
Hi
On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:
> I have just checked the Mozilla, and the fribidi packages.
>
> Unfortunately, seems the BiDi standard doesn't treat the "makaf" properly, and
> Konqueror shows exactly as Mozilla the Makaf problem, which gives numbers as
> negative, and the same shows with fribidi and gedit..
>
> Question is - how can this situation can be fixed?
It can't be easily fixed. It is a problem in the standard. Whatever you
choose, has some downsides.
I'll repeat what I've previously said:
the '-' char has two seperate roles: 'minus' and 'hyphen' ("makaf").
A minus should be an LTR character, just like a digit:
&he;&tav;&vav;&tsadi;&alef;&he; &he;&yod;&alef; -3
A hyphen, OTOH, is somewhat like a space, or a comma. It should be
regarded as a "neutral" character.
&he;&bet;&vav;&resh;&samekh;&he; &yod;&resh;&dalet;&he; &bet;-3%
The ascii standard define '-' as both minus and hyphen. the unicode
standard defines treats it basically as a minus, and therefore it is an
LTR character. Windows chose to use it as a hyphen. Therefore the first
example renders correctly with a "unicode" bidi renderer, whereas the
second example renders properly with a "windows" bidi renderer (what about
Macs?)
Basically unicode defines some seperate characters for hyphen and for
minus. Please see the thread I pointed earlier for some more details. This
is the real solution for the long run. But frankly I don't
But until then, the hyphen/minus remains a problematic case. One way
around it is to use LRM (an invisible left-to-right character).
windows1255 has one, IIRC. Can anybody try to see if this works with a
windows system?
Anyway: this requires a "smart" input mehtod, and is not a simple, elegant
sulotion. And it will not work with existing texts.
>
> Hetz
>
> Ely Levy wrote:
> >
> > You might be kidding on yor last e-mail,
> > but just think for a sec what would happen if gtk and qt won't implemant
> > the bidi on the same exact way.
> > that would create HUGE mess preventing people from trying to adjust thier
> > programs to use bidi.
> > same if mozilla and konquarer would show hebrew in a diffrent way.
> > luckly for us must of them chose fbidi as the way the implemant it,
> > I think it should be strictly the same way.
(hmm... how does bidi mozilla on win32 behave?)
As Hetz said, IBM uses their own implementation of the unicode bidi
algorithm.
If the QT people want to do something that does not conform to the unicode
bidi algorithm (which will mean problems with interoperabilty between
different X applications) they should have a very good reason.
The fact that the Mozilla people chose not to work around this probably
means that they had a good reason: whereas the bidi in gtk was implemented
by an american, a large protion of the work on bidi in mozilla was done by
israelies, so they were probably aware of such problems.
Also: please see this thread on the gtk-i18n list:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-i18n-list/2000-November/thread.html
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-i18n-list/2000-October/thread.html
BTW: speaking of bidi: I currently use
biditext xterm -e pine
as a (very partially!) bidi-capable mailer. This proves to be far more
useful than nothing (ignore the "heb" in the mailier version. I don't use
hebcompose).
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
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