kodiak@amiga.UUCP (Robert R. Burns) (05/11/89)
I am responsible for the kernel text routines on the Commodore Amiga
family of computers. I am investigating how I can make these text
routines most useful for languages that read right-to-left. I hope for
email dialog with people who are either users or developers of computer
environments that successfully mix left-to-right and right-to-left languages,
preferably in the same application.
- Bob "Kodiak" Burns
Footnotes:
1. I have the ECMA standards 114 (Latin/Arabic Alphabet), and 121
(Latin/Hebrew Alphabet). I currently intend to promote them for
character codes for those respective languages. I would, however,
be interested in why you think that is or is not a good idea.
2. I know the character position in a word affects the graphic of an
Arabic character, and that furthermore there are distinct ligatures.
I *don't* know whether there exists an accepted computer solution
that ignores this and uses only one character graphic for all word
positions a character can appear in. Is there?
3. The Amiga currently lets one define the character advance direction of
each character independently. Would this be used by the programmer of
a mixed direction application? I would think not, since the application
needs to have knowledge of the language direction for placement reasons
anyway. What *do* I need to provide in the kernel? Is there an
existing model you would recommend?
4. How do users type in mixed direction text? Is the language direction
selected by the user? Who "reverses" the text written in the "other"
direction: the user or the computer? Who is responsible for providing
the whitespace for text rendered in the other direction? I'm groping
for questions because I've never seen a mixed language environment --
does one exist? Where?
5. I have posted this to a collection of newsgroups (comp.text,
soc.culture.arabic, soc.culture.jewish) that I suspect does not often
occur. I hope not to clutter these newsgroups with responses. Please
help me achieve that by responding with email. If you must follow
up with a posting, please trim to the newsgroup you are reading in.
I'm aware that the two soc newsgroups are "non-technical", but I trust
readers of these groups are not only using computers :-), but are more
likely to be aware of right-to-left languages usage than the general
usenet public.
--
Bob Burns, {cbmvax,oliveb,well}!amiga!kodiak _
| /_ _|. _ | Commodore __ |_) _ |_ _ )'
|<(_)(_)|(_\|< /\ | ||| _` /\ |_)(_\| )(_\ |
| \ Software ___/..\|\/|||__|/..\___ Faith