Re: Bidi - will it happen ?

On Sat, 15 Jun 2002, Tim Freedom wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 08:39:23 +0300 (IDT),
> Eli Zaretskii eliz <at> is.elta.co.il wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Moe Elzubeir wrote:
> > > So I take it we are at square 0 ?
> >
> > Not exactly, but close.
> >
> > > I mean, where do I look to see exactly
> > > what needs to be implemented and what the agreed upon
> > > approach(es) if any.
> >
> > You can look in the archives of this mailing list.
>
> I'm at a loss here, why is it that qemacs
>
> http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemacs
>
> has been able to includebidi where-as emacs hasn't ?
> Mind you I haven't been able to compile the package
> (to verify for myself), but his claims still stand.

qemacs is not emacs.

qemacs is an editor with a number of similarities to emacs (mainly in the
looks and behaviour. However, it is more of a light-weight text editor.
Not much of a programable text-editor-and-a-kitchen-sink like emacs.

>
> I know nothing of lisp (let alone elisp), but can't
> the inclusion of fribidi (fribidi.sf.net) be
> incorporated somehow into the emacs code even as an
> external call for the time being (irrespective of
> inefficiency, ugliness, etc - given the user opts for
> its inclusion) ?

fribidi is a library that mainly provides a method for converting logical
Hebrew text to visual Hebrew text (in conformance with the unicode
standard, and efficiently).

Actually, from what I understand, a similar algorithm has already been
implemented in elisp by Eli.

Using fribidi or a similar library probably means patching emacs itself.
It also requires porting to various emacs ports. elisp is probably more
portable, although has some penalty in performance.

--

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir <at> technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir