> > * Changed: bidi class of several characters > Won't these fixes break applications out there? I.e., won't they turn > previously conformant applications into non conformant ones?
And the other thing to understand about this particular change is that it is the outcome of a years-long debate and a painstakingly negotiated settlement that reminded me of other difficult negotiations involving Middle Eastern issues. The upshot will be that Microsoft-based applications will come *into* compliance with the Bidirectional Algorithm, with the crucial few character property changes as stated. And IBM and other vendors who had implemented based on the prior property values agreed that it was worth the tweak in order to bring the entire industry into an agreed, interoperable state for bidirectional behavior (in the absence of higher-level protocols) involving the crucial ASCII characters, '+', '-', and '/', that interact with URL's, dates, times, and numbers in a bidirectional context. --Ken
