[Python-Dev] Divorcing str and unicode (no more implicitconversions).

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> This actually seems a killer even for allowing Unicode in comments,
> which I'd otherwise favor. What do Unicode-aware apps generally do
> with right-to-left characters?

The Unicode standard has an elaborate definition of what should happen.
There are many rules to it, but essentially, there is the notion of a
"primary" direction, which then is toggled based on the directionality
of each character (unicodedata.bidirectional). There are also formatting
characters which toggle the direction.

This aspect of rendering is often not implemented, though. Web browsers
do it correctly, see

http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python

where all text should come out right-adjusted, yet the Latin fragments
are still left to right (such as "Guido van Rossum")

Integrating it into this text looks like this: פייתון (Python).

GUI frameworks sometimes do it correctly, sometimes don't; most
notably, Tk has no good support for RTL text.

Regards,
Martin