numToChar with socking great numbers

[Fraser Gordon]

Hi Phil,

We do intend to have RTL support in the 7.x cycle. What is most likely to happen is that we'll initially introduce a simplified mode where a field is exclusively right-to-left or left-to-right and mixing isn't really supported. (Individual words in a mixed setting should render in the right order but e.g. English text in a Hebrew field will "this like render")

Full bidirectional support is the eventual goal but may take some time to implement and test properly as it requires extensive changes to the way fields currently lay-out and render their contents. Once this happens, RTL and LTR text can be mixed freely in a field and it should just do the right thing.

By "right thing", I mean that it will detect when a section of RTL or LTR text is embedded in an LTR or RTL field and ensure words are placed in the correct order. The Unicode RTL control characters will be obeyed for overriding the defaults where necessary.

The really "fun" part to get right is cursor positioning in mixed-direction fields; imagine you have an LTR field with:

<latin> <arabic> |

where | is the cursor position - if you type in some more arabic text, it should actually be inserted immediately after the latin (to the left of the existing arabic) rather than at the cursor position on the right. And how should the cursor move as you navigate the field with the arrow keys? 

So the short answer is "yes, but…" ;) Basic RTL functionality should happen in 7.0 or 7.x; full BiDi support is complex enough that it will take longer and I can't say for certain when it will appear.

Regards,
Fraser

P.S (for Richmond):
Surely the strangest character in all of Unicode is the emoji U+1F4A9 "PILE OF POO"
"numToChar(0xD83D) & numToChar(0xDCA9)"

On 13 Jan 2014, at 13:28, Phil Davis <revdev at pdslabs.net> wrote:

> Regarding 7.0 and Unicode... Is it possible that we'll see support for RTL text in 7.0? Or maybe 7.x?
> 
> Thanks -
> Phil Davis