Re: bidi reordering in program source buffers

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:51:54 +0300
> From: "Ehud Karni" <ehud@unix.mvs.co.il>
> Cc: schwab@linux-m68k.org, cyd@stupidchicken.com, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca,
>         emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On Sat, 20 Aug 2011 13:53:29 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >
> > In general, having something like this on display:
> >
> >  printf ("FEDCBA %d PONMLK %f ZYX %lu\n", foo, bar, baz);
> >
> > for a source that in logical order reads
> >
> >  printf ("ABCDEF %d KLMNOP %f XYZ %lu\n", foo, bar, baz);
> >
> > which is what you suggest, is only marginally better than the original
> > logical-order string, because the reading order is ambiguous at best,
> > and downright undecipherable in more complex situations, where the
> > format string includes punctuation and L2R text.  So if we think the
> > above is acceptable, we might as well consider not reordering this at
> > all.
> 
> I agree.
> 
> The default setting of bidi reordering for this kind of buffer should
> be nil.

Thanks for the feedback.

So in your opinion, buffers that display source code should not be
reordered, not even the strings and comments they display?  IOW, we
should give up showing human-readable portions of those buffers in a
legible display form?  That's a bit harsh, no?

> I think a (global) function that toggles the bidi reordering
> ONLY for the local buffer should ease the work of Emacs users.

Can you elaborate why this is needed?

In any case, the function should simply toggle the value of
bidi-display-reordering, as it's per-buffer variable.  But I rather
think Emacs should set this variable correctly without user
intervention.