From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs Lisp and Guile Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 08:14:08 +0300 (IDT) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1028438192 7633 127.0.0.1 (4 Aug 2002 05:16:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 05:16:32 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE, emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17bDkl-0001z0-00 for ; Sun, 04 Aug 2002 07:16:31 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 17bE4l-0005k3-00 for ; Sun, 04 Aug 2002 07:37:11 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17bDlI-0003jY-00; Sun, 04 Aug 2002 01:17:04 -0400 Original-Received: from is.elta.co.il ([199.203.121.2]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17bDl7-0003ix-00 for ; Sun, 04 Aug 2002 01:16:53 -0400 Original-Received: from is (is [199.203.121.2]) by is.elta.co.il (8.9.3/8.8.8) with SMTP id IAA17614; Sun, 4 Aug 2002 08:14:09 +0300 (IDT) X-Sender: eliz@is Original-To: Simon Josefsson In-Reply-To: Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:6274 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:6274 On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Simon Josefsson wrote: > I think it would be nice if Emacs could > take advantage of the work that went into libc for low-level non-ASCII > manipulation, and into GNOME (GTK) for high-level non-ASCII display > (e.g., bidirectional text), instead of re-implementing it all just for > Emacs. It doesn't seem very re-usable. The display part of the bidirectional editing support must be reimplemented for Emacs because the Emacs display engine examines the buffer text one character at a time. For each character examined, Emacs decides how to display it and also whether to examine more of the buffer. By contrast, all the bidi libraries out there accept a buffer of text and return that buffer reordered for display. Making the Emacs display work in such a batch-style manner means a total rewrite of the display code, and also loses over slow connections, which AFAIK we still want to support. That's the main reason why Emacs development didn't use fribidi or some similar library, although people who (slowly) work on bidi Emacs are well aware of fribidi and similar efforts.