From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,437e9fdc6e4f0fdd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-04-09 07:18:05 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!znr.news.ans.net!news.philabs.research.philips.com!blanket.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!not-for-mail From: Mike Brenner Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Hebrew Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 10:24:08 -0400 Organization: none Message-ID: <3AD1C608.FCBC9B54@mitre.org> References: <9ap1rl$9ic1@news.cis.okstate.edu> <87vgofy9du.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: mbrenner.mitre.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: top.mitre.org 986825818 13951 129.83.61.23 (9 Apr 2001 14:16:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Apr 2001 14:16:58 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en]C-20000818M (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6658 Date: 2001-04-09T14:16:58+00:00 List-Id: >> What type of functionality? Right-to-left? It doesn't seem like that big a deal - wide_text_io could handle it right now, right? Florian Weimer wrote: > In the Unicode universe, handling right-to-left scripts correctly is mostly the job of the terminal, not of the application. Unicode stores characters in logical order, not in visual order. To expand on that, the renderer (terminal driver, print driver, etc.) is the component that goes back and forth, but some systems have directional attributes that tell the device driver when to go back and forth. See, for example, http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/attrs.html which shows how this is done for web pages using html 4.0 using the dir=rtl (direction=right2left) attribute. The point is that Ada would just be generating the string and the device driver would be interpreting the string; that is, the device driver would be making it switch to right2left mode, not Ada. BTW this is important for quite a few languages, not just Hebrew. It is fundamental for Arabic, Biblical Hebrew, Farsi, Ancient Greek, etc., per se. But many languages, like English, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, etc., also use different directions of text when quoting right-to-left languages in the middle of left-to-right text, or when writing in columns or other than left-to-right paragraphs. ----- This is like the question of whether coding should be done in UTF-8 or use a 16-bit character encoding. UTF-8 has advantages for websites in simple English and most American emails. Various 16-bit codes have advantages for Asian languages, eCommerce encodings, multi-language web sites. The question is, is it important for English speaking people to make codings, software, web sites, advertisements, etc., that work well for people of many different languages? Or, to restate that question, is it important for Asia to use the same Unicode, the same character encodings, and ultimately, compatible web pages with Europe and the Americas? It is amazing that in 2001 the fonts that come with American computers and web browsers don't include most of Unicode yet. Mike