Re: bidi-display-reordering is now non-nil by default

[Stefan Monnier]

> I guess what I'm saying is that the API will almost certainly change
> as we gain experience.  So I'm unsure how elaborate we should make it
> at this point, because any mistake will mean more changes in the
> future when the API changes.

Right.  Better not solve this problem yet.

> we insert LRM/RLM between NAME and <n>.  The difficulty is that you
> need to know in advance the paragraph direction where the string will
> be inserted.  This means the embedding should happen very close to

Hmm... so UAX#9 does not give us the tools we need, here.

> There's a similar issue with file names: /abcd/ABCD/XYZ will be
> displayed as /abcd/ZYX/DCBA.

IIUC in an English paragraph this should be displayed as /abcd/DCBA/ZYX
but in a Hebrew paragraph it should be displayed as ZYX/DCBA/abcd/, right?

> Btw, using LRM/RLM is always preferred when possible, because it's
> stateless, as opposed to an embedding.  UAX#9 says that much.  Also,

Yes, that makes a lot of sense (just think of using substring to select
part of the embedding, dropping the initial or final marker).

So embeddings should not be used too much, and/or should only be used
dynamically (jit-lock-style) and implicitly (e.g. not copied by
kill-region).

> So a related question is: should we prefer the marks where possible,
> or should we standardize on embeddings?  I'm not sure we are equipped
> with enough experience to decide at this time.

Agreed.

> However, an important practical question is: which alternative to use
> to fix read_minibuf, for example?

I don't think it matters too much; just use whatever works best.


        Stefan