Re: Bidirectional text and URLs

[Richard Stallman]

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  > > We need a convenient _user-level_ feature to make them visible.

  > We have glyphless-char-display-control, which is a defcustom.  If that
  > is still too technical, we can have a minor mode to set that for these
  > directional controls,

A minor mode would be convenient enough for non-wizard users.

  > I think we should prefer making them visible only in the context where
  > they could cause harm.  Making them visible everywhere could be an
  > annoyance.

It would only be an annoyance for users who really use bidi,
and they would turn it off so it would not annoy them again.

  > But even if I'd agree with you, making a convenient and reliable way
  > of going back to unidirectional display of Emacs 23 and before would
  > require a lot of work, because the current display engine no longer
  > supports unidirectional display without reordering, at least not
  > reliably.

It is easy to make an option turn off bidi processing.
All it has to do is make all characters seem LTR.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
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