[openbeos] Re: StyledEdit and bi-di text

Yeah, I agree.  I was mostly asking to satisfy my
curiosity about such things. :-)  I am aware that R5
BFont supports drawing strings in either directions,
and I wasn't sure how (or if) BTextView interacted
with that functionality.  I was thinking that if the
direction could be changed then we could have another
menu item like the Document->Align menu where the user
could twiddle it to their preference.  This would be
trivial and the only other work it would have entailed
would have been retaining that bit of information when
the file was saved/loaded, and possibly creating a
reasonable default for it.

However, from what I can tell drawing strings in a 
particular direction is a property of the font that 
you are using and can not be set arbitrarily.  What 
this means for bidi text in general I don't know but 
unless it's automagically supported when you change 
the font to a hebrew font it won't be even marginally 
supported until R2.  If it is automagically supported 
then perhaps maintaining the text alignment will be 
enough to make stylededit usable, if only for reading.
I understand there are still some input method issues 
and those will not be addressed until someone donates 
us a hebrew input method. :-)

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: "Michael Phipps" <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 21:46:30 EST
Subject: [openbeos] Re: StyledEdit and character set encodings

This list is a phenominal example of why we need to 
address these issues at some point in the future. It 
is *way* too much to try to build R5 *AND* something 
more at the same time. If we tried to do so, we 
couldn't be done until 2010. ;-) 

The Right Way to address bidi and other directional 
types is to do it in the Interface Kit. Once. Instead 
of doing it in a bunch of apps.  Then all apps will 
gain the functionality nearly simultaneously. 

I know waiting for this stuff is hard. But an english 
only OBOS in 2003 is better than an OS that does what 
everyone in the community wants in 2010.

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