> Sincere question: if these characters aren't needed, why are they > provided? From what I can tell by googling, they're needed when, e.g., > Arabic is embedded in an otherwise left-to-right script. Do I have > that right?
I think not. In principle, each character has a directionality (available through unicodedata.bidirectional), and a rendering algorithm should be able detect runs of characters that differ in directionality from the surrounding text, rendering it properly. As a special case, certain characters are declared "neutral", extending the run across, say, spaces. So embedding Arabic in an LTR text *alone* makes no requirement for these control characters. I'm unsure whether there are cases where the standard BIDI algorithm would produce incorrect results; it's certainly the case that not all tools implement it correctly, so the control characters can help those tools (assuming the tool implements the control character at least). Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
