Re: Bidirectional text and URLs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 18:54:43 +0100
> 
> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> 
> > So...  would a possible solution here be as simple as removing all
> > right-to-left indicators in mail and web modes if those right-to-left
> > indicators apply to URLs?
> 
> Or even simpler: The URL-finding functions would explicitly place
> left-to-right markers over the bits of the URL that have left-to-right
> characters if there are any RTL markers in the buffer.
> 
> This would make all the bits that say "http://example.com" etc be
> left-to-right, and if there are bits in the URL later that contains,
> say, Hebrew, those would still be displayed correctly.

Please don't: you will never be able to do that correctly without
re-implementing bidi.c in Lisp.  The UBA rules are much more complex
than what you seem to envision; in particular, a character can be
neither RTL nor LTR (so called "weak" and "neutral" characters, like
the slash and the period).

In any case, I think what you suggest is too drastic.  We don't need
to change the display of these URLs from their intended one, we just
need to make the user aware of the possible phishing.  E.g., with your
suggestion, a Web page that explain how the URL you posted at the
beginning could be dangerous won't be able to make its point clearly
visible ;-)