Re: Bidirectional text and URLs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 12:13:04 -0500
> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> CC: larsi@gnus.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
>   > Actually, even this is not true: the directional overrides will still
>   > have their effect.  So deeper changes are needed to countermand that
>   > as well.
> 
> It should not be hard for the same flag to tell the code not to
> recognize those characters.

The point is it's not just a change in some table.  The code needs to
be changed as well, then tested, debugged, and maintained.  Without a
good reason, that's just waste of resources.

>   > And I still don't understand the purpose of such a feature.  Users who
>   > cannot read RTL won't be able to understand the text either way, and
>   > don't know what is "the right" display to make any sense out of what
>   > will be presented when bidi processing is "turned off".
> 
> One use of disabling bidi is that you'll see what the strange URL
> really consists of.

We already have a better solution for that, I just added yesterday the
infrastructure that enables such a solution.  We can now stop talking
about the "reversed URL" case, it's a problem that is all but solved.

> And likewise any other texts that involve bidi: you'll see what the
> real sequence of characters is.

If it's the same case as with reversed URL, i.e. obfuscation by using
directional overrides, then the same solution will work there.  If
it's something else, seeing RTL text in logical order will not help
anyone who doesn't already know how to read that text in its reordered
for display form.