kindaro
commented
5 years ago @treeowl I am not sure I see the same picture that you do.
The only operation where writing direction matters is para which reflows a string to fit a given column width. We should probably improve it so it can reflow to fit a given height as well, for generality. Then:
- Every sub-box can be reflown with any direction priority, so if you have a text with different directions, you just have to split it into homo-directional sub-boxes and reflow each of them separately.
- If there is an "inline" substring with different reading direction, nothing special is to be done.
Am I missing anything?
Support by various terminals, etc., is likely limited, but it's worth looking into. There are languages that run right to left; on their own, these should pose no challenge (right and left just swap), but mixing them with left to right will be somewhat challenging. There are also languages that are written primarily from top to bottom, then from left to right or right to left. These would likely be much harder to mix with LTR/RTL in this form, but it may not be entirely necessary, as these languages sometimes/often can be written LTR or RTL.