>I would argue strongly that we do NOT want the console to do anything >other than traditional VT100-style left-to-right text output. Bidi or >quaddi output are best left to specialized applications
That is the status quorum right now: English is pretty much the language of computers, and if you want to use them seriously (command line or programming) you have to learn english. I imagine though, that it would be possible to have a simple, cell oriented terminal with a global writing direction vector(rowdir,coldir) Then at least it would be possible to have a command line in pure hebrew or mongolian. Multi directional support is harder, and perhaps inappropriate from a complexity standpoint. However if multidirectional support was limited to to row direction, then mixing say English/Arabic would work fine. So a global row direction, typically right, left or down. and a column direction, typically down or left. Reverse directional text would be limited to reverse row direction text. Wrapping of word/paragraphs would be left to the user applications, the terminal just supporting a set of rows of characters in a grid. As a special consideration, different fonts are more suitable for some row orientations than others. (Alternatively different rasterizations of the same font for TrueType) Also, vertical columns would always be double width, and single-width characters would be centered in a column. I think it could work: the question is does anyone see value in having a vertical-row-terminal, or in a bidi-row-right-left-terminal? -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
