Re: Bidirectional text and URLs

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > > If so, the questionis: once you detect the strangeness, what then?

  > It's up to the application.

Alas, that's ducking the issue.  We need to confront this issue.

  > That's easy: copy the text without the directional override and
  > display it in some other buffer.  The position returned by
  > bidi-find-overridden-directionality is of the 1st character following
  > the override control, so copying the text starting at that position
  > will exclude the override and avoid its effects.

That is the first magic bidi char, but there could be more.  It would
be necessary to remove them all.

However, is simply removing them correct?  In general, do magic bidi
characters get include in the URL that is passed to the browser?  I would expect so.

If so, a string which does not include them is inaccurate, and the
accurate thing to do is to include them and display them (perhaps in
hex) while suppressing their bidi effect.

Also, don't some RTL characters cause some normally LTR characters to
display RTL?  That too could cause confusion, right?

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Dr Richard Stallman
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