Re: [Bug-zile] Bidirectional support in Zi

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Reuben,

On 14 Feb 2012, at 07:08, Reuben Thomas wrote:
> On 13 February 2012 05:18, Gary V. Vaughan <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I'm not at all convinced it's even possible to support RTL languages
>> in a text-mode editor running in a terminal emulator, and actually I'm
>> not even aware of any other text-mode editor that supports it (I haven't
>> checked, but I imagine even Emacs' support is only in GUI mode).
> 
> I see no such obstacle. Some very simple experiments with Emacs 24 in
> a terminal suggest that it sees no obstacles either (I just googled
> for a function to switch to RTL for Hebrew, used it and typed some
> Hebrew letters, which obligingly appeared RTL).

Thanks for checking... I stand corrected. :)

So it seems that provided you have a terminal that supports display of
hebrew/arabic fonts (presumably UTF8), that the RTL aspects can be
supported by the curses using application!  That being the case, I see
no reason not to accept a pull-request for a bidi-enabled remote git
branch of Lua Zile, so long as we have someone to supply and support it.

Aside: I'd have though it would have been better to have a bidi-enabled
terminal emulator, along with terminfo capability escape codes to turn
the feature on and off.  That way any terminal app would automatically
display RTL text without having to write special code each time.

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)