> Hello, > > At Mon, 24 Dec 2001 18:50:19 +0200, > Shaul Karl wrote: > > > I believe a terminal emulator is the natural place for BiDi handling. > > Isn't one of the terminal emulator main tasks to free the application > > from the > > tedious details of input/output and present a common interface? After > > all, it is the terminal emulator and not the application who has more > > knowledge about the terminal and the most convenient methods of dealing > > with various aspects of the terminal. A terminal emulator that does not > > handle its BiDi applications force these applications to deal with BiDi > > by themselves. > > This is bad because: > > (1) It complicates the application with aspects that the application > > should not be concerned of (input/output methods). > > (2) It also complicates the application because the application has > > more limited ways to handle the terminal then the terminal emulator. > > (3) It does not help in creating a common application-terminal > > interface for BiDi applications. Actually, not only that it does not > > help but it also makes it more difficult. Even if the application > > programmer is looking for BiDi support it is hard for him to verify the > > correctness of his work since this is not natural for him. > > Thank you for your clear opinion. Though I fully agree the logic of > your opinion, I thought it was not sufficient. I wanted to know how > _native_ speakers of Hebrew and Arab think. (Sometimes logically > perfect opinion annoys native speakers because native speakers have > their own way to do and tradition, which may be somewhat irrational > but should be respected.) >
I am a native Hebrew speaker. However I believe that what is most derivable here are native speakers who are Unix programmers that also program to the Terminal, as opposed to X env. Not sure if there are many people under this category. I am hardly qualified under this narrower category. Yet I will try to comment, hoping that I will be able to make sense. I do not think you can speak of tradition here since there is none, at least as far as I can tell. In fact, I believe that you and other who try to code multi lingual terminals are establishing the standard. > > > > The point is, Shaul, do you think the BiDi support should be enabled > > > by default or should be disabled by default? > > > > What are the implications of enabling it by default? > > Will it be transparent to applications that are not BiDi aware? Will it > > makes them totally unusable? Perhaps it would makes them show some > > gibberish here and there but the overall result would be acceptable? > > Enabling BiDi never make mlterm unusable for non-BiDi people. > I cannot feel even speed down because of BiDi. I think there are > no reasons to disable BiDi. > > FYI, there are some people who thinks BiDi should be supported not > by terminal emulators but by applications. > http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/luit/ > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#xterm > However, they are not native speakers of RTL languages and I think > native speakers' opinion should be respected. > I have skim these references. Although I do not fully understand what they are talking about (what is full ISO 2022 support that luit mentioned) I do believe that what the xterm reference said about special application programs is wrong. I will make write a bit more about this in my reply to the message that Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> gave. > --- > Tomohiro KUBOTA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/ > "Introduction to I18N" http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/ > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- Shaul Karl email: shaulka(at-no-spam)bezeqint.net Please replace (at-no-spam) with an at - @ - character. (at-no-spam) is meant for unsolicitate mail senders only. _______________________________________________ I18n mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/i18n
