Sunday, February 20, 2011

Re: bidi in vim

* Bram Moolenaar <Bram@Moolenaar.net> [20/02/11 09:24]:
>
> Moshe Kamensky wrote:
>
> > I am interested in writing bidirectional text in Vim. I realise, from
> > previous discussions on the list, the it would be difficult to support
> > the bidi standard in Vim. However, I was wondering if a more manual
> > approach would be easier to implement. What I had in mind was to extend
> > the syntax highlighting system, to allow specifying the direction of a
> > syntax region. This would mean that the direction of a character is
> > determined by its syntax group, so no implementation of the bidi
> > algorithm is necessary. Of course, displaying a string in the correct
> > direction is more complicated than highlighting with a given colour, but
> > perhaps it is easy enough (I'm not familiar with the code).
> >
> > If this can be done, I think it will solve most practical problems,
> > since when editing latex, for example, text in different direction will
> > appear in particular commands or environments.
>
> This might work for displaying the text, but how about moving the cursor
> through it? And how would commands like "c2w" work when they cross the
> bidi boundary?

I would say that commands that refer to logical parts of a text, like
c2w, should ignore the display direction, and just work on the text.
With cursor movements such as h and l, which (for me, at least) are
"visual", I would prefer them to stay absolute (i.e., h is always move
left). But I think either option is reasonable, and should be easy to
get used to. In cases I have in mind, the embedded bidi segments would
be rather complete logical units (e.g., an English phrase or a math
formulas within a Hebrew sentence), so I would rarely want change two
words across bidi boundaries.

Thanks,
Moshe

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