Re: "Difficult Characters" draft

["Martin J. Duerst" <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, 2 May 1997, Larry Masinter wrote:

> > Other issues:
> > The bidi issues for RLT languages in conjunction with
> > normal punctuation used in and around identifiers. (Will
> > the identifiers present themselves 'correctly' without
> > these characters in all cases?)
> 
> When you type Hebrew and enter:
> 
>    "http://host.il/WERBEH/DROW"
> 
> (HEBREW WORD), might some typing software add direction markers
> and some other typing software leave it out?

When the above sequence is typed (in logical/phonetical order
as HEBREW/WORD) in a *plain text context* and with a display
engine using the Unicode BIDI algorithm, it will not appear
as desired, i.e. as WERBEH/DROW. The same applies to a lot of
other kinds of formal syntax, in particular also to HTML/SGML
syntax.

Sadly enough, there doesn't seem anything much that can be done
to change this.

The aim of the upcomming draft for BIDI for URLs (or identifiers)
is to define their display (and input) behaviour in places where
these identifiers are handled as such, i.e. the input field at
the top of a browser page, the file list display in finder-like
places, and URL input/display in structured HTML editors,...

Regards,	Martin.