From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I didn't say it couldn't possibly done. But it IS too complex a > situation for raw Unicode to handle, in general. Considering how weird > some results come out with the normal bidi algorithm as it is, > boustrophedon not something that should be handled in plain text, and > that's about all there is to it.
I don't see any place in boustrophedon scripts that forbids them to work with BiDi. one just needs to make it work like BN (Bidi Neutral) and affect their direction from the previous character or the occurence of a line break (which inverts its current direction, but still keeps it in a BN context. All the complex cases are already resolved with scripts having strong directionality. Boustrophedon script is a weaker and allows more flexibility than in the case of mixed (strong RTL + strong LTR). Small inclusions of Boustrophedon in either RTL or LTR texts will be mostly transparent (unless there's a line break in the middle of this boustrophedon fragment). Most boustrophedon scripts can also be handled in a strong RTL or strong LTR style, where the standard BiDi algorithm can be used. For Archaic Greek for example, its inclusion within Hebrew texts would adopt the Hebrew directionality, but in a Latin text, it would adopt the LTR directionality. For this example, the strong directionality of the Greek script with which it is unified is too strong. What should be noted is that directionality should be made weaker than in the existing standard. Shamely there's no Bidi override control that allows setting a weak (contextual) directionality. Boustrophedon is a specialized subcase, but there are scripts that can be written indifferently from LTR or from RTL. With a weak directionality, we could avoid direction breaks when rendering lines (meaning that all glyphs representing characters with weak directionality would NEVER need to be reordered). This is a case where a BDW (Bidi-Weak Override) control could be helpful for sections of text that should be rendered with weak directionality (for example with inclusions of Archaic Greek terms within semitic texts).
