Re: Message Mode and bidi

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

On Mon, Feb 19 2024, Christopher Culver via "Emacs development discussions." wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> I cannot reproduce this.  What I see is that Message mode supports
>> bidirectional text as expected, including what you describe in the
>> previous paragraph regarding right-aligning the RTL text.  So please
>> tell more what you did by describing in detail the commands you typed.
>
> I have tried this with a completely virgin Emacs installation, but
> Message Mode continues to show less than full support for bidi text.

When you compose a new message, is there a line "--text follows this line--"
separating the headers and the message text? In my case, there is (I use mu4e)
and when I type Arabic text on the line below this text, I get the effect you
mention. If I leave an empty line after "--text follows this line--", bidi works
as expected.

I believe this is due to the interaction of two things: 1. Emacs uses the first
word of a paragraph to determine whether the paragraph is ltr or rtl; and 2.
Emacs assumes that a paragraph is preceded by an empty line. So if you type rtl
text on the line below the "--text follows this line--" separator, Emacs
assumes the separator and the text you're typing belong to the same paragraph,
and since the first word of this paragraph is from an ltr writing system, the
paragraph is displayed ltr.



-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments