Re: arrow keys vs. C-f/b/n/p

[Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@cs.bham.ac.uk>]

Drew Adams wrote:

>> It's actually not really decoupled.
>> It just switches between "C-f = right and C-b = left" and
>> "C-f = left and C-b = right" based on the paragraph's direction.
>> Which seems eminently meaningful since the associating between
>> "forward" and "right" is just based on our usual convention of
>> writing L2R.
> 
> On the surface this seems wrong and overly complicated (to me). "Eminently
> meaningful" it no doubt is, but it seems somehow bass ackwards. ;-) It seems
> wrong for `right' to mean "left".

No, Stefan is not saying 'right' should mean "left"!

He is saying that 'right' moves right, 'left' moves left, 'C-f' moves forward 
in the text direction and 'C-b' moves backward in the text direction. 
Sometimes the two sets of keys match up one way, and sometimes the other way. 
Eminently meaningful indeed!

Whether you want to call this "coupled" or "decoupled" is a matter of 
terminology.

> But is it really important that "forward" in a command name move toward the left
> in R2L? Why should "forward" necessarily mean "from text beginning toward text
> end" rather than just "toward the right"? What is at stake here?

Only an R2L user can answer that (which I am not).  However, consistency 
matters.  If "forward" doesn't really mean forward in the text, I think you 
will end up with nonsense in the end, such as "beginning of sentence" moving to 
the end of sentence.  That is why I came up with a bunch of questions the other 
day, which seem all interlinked.

Cheers,
Uday