Re: PuTTY Bidi

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at cs dot toronto dot edu>]

On Sun, 7 Mar 2004, ahmad khalifa wrote:

>
> New putty with Bidi available here:
> http://www.toomuchcookies.net/~arabeyes/putty7.exe
>
> i have a few questions about Bidi in general and then i'll get to PuTTY.
>
> + Can i use the Refrence Code avalable in UAX #9 at (i already did)

As far as I know, no, you can't.  Do you think I would have
written fribidi if one could simply use that code?  Moreover,
that code does not handle Unicode.  Just ASCII, as you said
yourself.

>    http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr9/
>    the code is at
>    http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr9/BidiReferenceCpp
>    it says it can be “Distributed Freely”? At the top of bidi_c.txt
>    Are there any license issues or anything i should
>    know of.? I'll give credits and all...

I recommend you drop it as soon as possible.  That's like the
Java source code.  Just reference.

> + Is it good ? It seems to work for me..
>    I had to modify the Type table (i.e that has character types, like L, R
> AL, CS, etc..)
>    and added another table for arabic.

No.  It does not support Unicode.

> + If i can use the code, can someone who knows Bidi better than me, check
> the code to
>    see if my changes are sufficient to handle all arabic and english chars
> (i.e check the
>    Type Tables at least).? The patch is not yet available.

Apart from this issue, I have serious problems with this approach
of passing every line to bidi....  But I don't open my mouth now.
That's what you are doing, good or bad.  I just said that because
unlike what people usually think, a wrong implementation *can*
hurt the global movement.

behdad