Re: Adding Bidi to Fvwm ?

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at bamdad dot org>]

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Mikhael Goikhman wrote:

> On 21 Feb 2002 12:08:45 -0800, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> > 
> > With the recent work on multibyte support in Fvwm2 - has any thought been
> > given to those languages that are right-to-left oriented (Arabic, Farsi,
> > Hebrew, etc...) ?  In other words, have any considerations been given to
> > the addition of Bidi (Bi-directionality) ?
> > 
> >   http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr9/
> > 
> > May I suggest a compile-time option of including Fribidi (open source Bidi
> > library),
> > 
> >   http://fribidi.sourceforge.net
> > 
> > I'd be interested in adding Arabic support to Fvwm but that is very much
> > hinged on the inclusion of Bidi (its a first-order requirement).  It would
> > greatly simply life for me (and others I'm sure) if there was an option
> > to include and enable Bidi without having to resort to hacks.
> > 
> > For what its worth - the inclusion of Bidi will certainly increase Fvwm's
> > user base, since it would be one of the few window-managers with FULL
> > multibyte support; a BIG deal to those that are right-to-left'ies :-)
> > 
> > Any takers ? Olivier ;-) ?
> 
> I don't know whether I will add bidi support, but I may try to start it.
> At least I understand what this means. It is not trivial to immediately
> understand why this is needed and even less trivial to understand that
> it's all heuristics, there may be possible conflicts in any algorithms.
> Examples of logical input / visual output.
> 
>   % echo "SHALOM, fvwm (SHALOM is hi in IVRIT!)." | fribidi -C CapRTL
>                                  .(!IVRIT is hi in MOLAHS) fvwm ,MOLAHS
>   % echo "hi 1-2 (english) is SHALOM 1-2 (IVRIT)." | fribidi -C CapRTL
>   hi 1-2 (english) is IVRIT) 2-1 MOLAHS).
>   # the second example seems like a bug in my fribidi, but maybe not

This is not a bug in fribidi, but a bug in the Unicode BiDi 
Algorithm, fribidi is just doing its job right.



-- 
Behdad Esfahbod				4 Esfand 1380, 2002 Feb 23 
<behdad at bamdad dot org>		[Finger for Geek Code]

Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted?
Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student?
Does a good father allow a single child to starve?
Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code?
	-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"