native Python text editor with Hebrew support?

[Neil Hodgson]

> I realize that this is getting a bit specialized, but I am looking for a
> text editor written in Python which can handle some rudimentary facets
> of Hebrew; namely, writing right-to-left and the Hebrew fonts (e.g., ISO
> 8859).
>
> Ah, yes, I need the source code so that I can make some changes, and it
> must run on Windoze.
>
> Is anything available?  I have looked through Parnassus, and realize
> that Scintilla and PythonWin might be candidates.

   While Scintilla/SciTE/PythonWin currently support Unicode and allow the
use of Hebrew characters they do not have bidi capability and so do not
layout Hebrew correctly. This is 'planned' for future implementation but so
far there has been little demand so it is quite a way off. Because there is
also a GTK+ version of Scintilla, more Unicode functionality will be worked
on when GTK+ 1.4 which includes the Pango international text module is
released. Then I can see how to approach these issues in a portable way.

   For performance, Python oriented editors are mostly written on two levels
with the basic editing widget written in C/C++ and Python used for higher
level control.

   On Windows, the rich text edit control can be used for international text
and I think this includes Hebrew. You should be able to use Richedit from
within PythonWin fairly easily. Before Scintilla, it used to be used for all
source editing within PythonWin.

   Neil