New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Bidirectional Text Navigation
Ask HN: Bidirectional Text Navigation
4 by java-man | 2 comments on Hacker News.
This question is specifically for people who use right-to-left OSes and software (Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, etc.) When navigating (using cursor arrow keys) or editing "mixed" text (text that contains a mixture of right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR) segments, what is your expectation (or wish) regarding the caret movement and appearance? A bit of background. It looks like initially, many software packages employed what we might call a "visual" navigation, that is, repeating RIGHT arrow key would move the caret one symbol to the right, regardless of the directionality of the text. Some time after 2007, it seems, there was a switch to a "logical" navigation when the movement of the caret is governed by the position of the insertion index in the underlying (unicode) text. In this mode, repeatedly pressing RIGHT key results in the caret switching direction when it crosses the boundary between segments having a different orientation. When it comes to the caret appearance, a number of options can be seen: 1. caret is unchanged 2. caret shows a little directionality indicator that looks like a little pennant or line 3. a dual or split caret So the questions I have are: 1. Is there a consensus currently as to how the caret navigation should work in mixed text? 2. How should, in your opinion, the ideal navigation work? 3. How, in your opinion, should software indicate the insertion point for the next typed character? 4. Is there an example of software designed for your writing system, that get all of it right? Your answers will affect the direction of a certain open source platform. Thank you so much in advance!
4 by java-man | 2 comments on Hacker News.
This question is specifically for people who use right-to-left OSes and software (Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, etc.) When navigating (using cursor arrow keys) or editing "mixed" text (text that contains a mixture of right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR) segments, what is your expectation (or wish) regarding the caret movement and appearance? A bit of background. It looks like initially, many software packages employed what we might call a "visual" navigation, that is, repeating RIGHT arrow key would move the caret one symbol to the right, regardless of the directionality of the text. Some time after 2007, it seems, there was a switch to a "logical" navigation when the movement of the caret is governed by the position of the insertion index in the underlying (unicode) text. In this mode, repeatedly pressing RIGHT key results in the caret switching direction when it crosses the boundary between segments having a different orientation. When it comes to the caret appearance, a number of options can be seen: 1. caret is unchanged 2. caret shows a little directionality indicator that looks like a little pennant or line 3. a dual or split caret So the questions I have are: 1. Is there a consensus currently as to how the caret navigation should work in mixed text? 2. How should, in your opinion, the ideal navigation work? 3. How, in your opinion, should software indicate the insertion point for the next typed character? 4. Is there an example of software designed for your writing system, that get all of it right? Your answers will affect the direction of a certain open source platform. Thank you so much in advance!
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